Nobility is Not a Birth-Right
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: 'It is defined by one's actions'. Ilá, shield-maiden of the Dúnedain and Ranger, is commissioned by Gandalf to bring common sense on the dwarves' quest to reclaim Erebor. Cousin to Aragorn, Ilá's knowledge of the Wild aids the dwarves, and teaches the young princes what it means to be royalty. On their journey, Fíli becomes obsessed with 'treasure'.
1. An Unexpected Party

**A.N.**: I've seen _The Hobbit_ twice, once in 3D, and have decided I am in lust with Kili and Fili. Anyway, I was looking through the casting, and realised the actor who plays Balin was also Marius in _King Arthur_, and _that_ got me thinking about the seven-against-two-hundred battle on the ice and that gave me _ideas_.

I would also like to note, in the book it is Fíli who is the younger (while in the LOTR Appendices it cites Kíli's birth-date as five years after that of Fíli. So I guess PJ went for the _Appendices_ version of the ages.

I was going to make this a Kíli/OC fic but now I'm rethinking things after reading an essay on _Heirs of Durin_. Thanks to my imagination and my character's influence on the company, there will be plot deviations from both novel/movie to, not just return the dwarves to Erebor, but make the heirs ready for kingship.

For my character's costumes, I was inspired by Kíli and Fíli's costumes, Scottish clans' distinctive tartans, the armour of the knights in _King Arthur_ (particularly Tristram), Queen Sibylla's turbans in _Kingdom of Heaven_ and Sophia Myles in that funky Viking-alien movie, and Fantine's blue hood in the _Les Misérables_ trailer. I might put together a _Pinterest_ board for this story…

Next chapter I'll put my playlist into the A.N.; lots of soundtracks inspired this story while I was driving home from my grandmother's yesterday.

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**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_01_

* * *

The cosy little hole in the ground featured a merry party, raucous laughter and the riotous conversation of dwarves with full stomachs, full tankards and surrounded by friends and their closest relatives. Twelve they numbered, not including the wide-eyed little Hobbit who owned the polished warren under-hill, and the tall, wizened figure in shabby grey wool, his great hat removed on a peg in the hall.

In the growing dark of the April evening, the candlelight cast flickering shadows against the walls, shadows of bushy beards and long noses distorted by the smoke of half a dozen pipes fashioned in various materials, short, stubby clay pipes, long, carved wood pipes polished beautifully; tobacco pots littered the dining-table with the stubs of candles, the remnants of a heavy meal (for a hobbit, at least; for twelve dwarves it was but a light supper after a long journey) and glasses of every design filled with mead, wine, port and such as could be found in the hobbit's wine-cellar.

Talk turned to the specifics of the dwarves' quest, mainly their unease over their number. Thirteen. Twelve dwarves and the unwilling Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag-End; Gandalf of course could not be officially counted amongst the party as he kept his own schedule, and disappeared long before he was missed, reappearing only when the situation seemed most dire. Thirteen was a troublesome number; in the general argument over Gandalf's suggestion of recruiting a burglar, it had been agreed none of the company present would venture forth to slay the fire-worm Smaug unless the situation of the unlucky-number was resolved.

A fourteenth member needed to be found before any business of the dragon-horde within Erebor could be discussed, and in any case, they were short one dwarf, the Most Important of their company, in fact.

Gandalf sighed deeply and heavily, his beard wagging and sending wiry shadows across the wall; the smoke-rings he had been blowing while the dwarves sang now created a haze at the top of the tunnel-like chamber, eerily shadowing his wizened face, and as the dwarves descended into silence for a moment to lose themselves in their tankards, a knock sounded on Mr Bilbo's beautifully painted front-door. It wasn't an impatient _rat-tat-tat_ with someone's knuckles, nor was it the _tap-tap_ from Gandalf's staff leaving dents in the freshly-painted wood; it a soft but purposeful _knock-knock_.

The dwarves expected only one more of their brethren at this meeting; stealth had been decided as the best course of action for their purposes, encouraged by Gandalf, but he was journeying from the North, and Mr Baggins had made no note of an evening engagement—indeed, it was far too late for any respectable hobbit to be announcing themselves as guests in their neighbours' homes. Who then was it?

Eyes shining in the dark, Mr Baggins got up stiffly from the little stool on which he had been perched by the fire, nibbling a biscuit (his appetite quite gone after the assault on his larders and his wine-cellar by these dwarves who had invited themselves in) and, shaking like a leaf, stumbled to his front-door. Wondering who _now_ he would find on his doorstep—another dwarf? another wizard? (were there other wizards, he thought) or a neighbour complaining about the noise the raucous dwarves had no doubt been making while they feasted on his prized heritage tomatoes and the cured gammon he had bought from the butcher's not two days ago.

Half terrified to do so, Mr Baggins opened his front-door for the final time that evening; a figure, exceedingly tall to him but little more than a head taller than Dwalin, the largest and most intimidating of the dwarves in his dining-room, stood just outside the lamplight splashing over his garden-path. In the darkening dusk, Mr Baggins trembled at the figure, tall and clad in dark, weathered cloth that had seen time and hardship. In the dark he could see only that the figure had a pale face, and the lamplight reflected off something silvery clasped at their shoulder.

"Good evening," he squeaked, and the figure stepped forward.

It was a woman. No woman as Bilbo had ever seen, used as he was to merry hobbit-girls with their beribboned curls and colourful frocks, but she was indeed female; though sombre and pale, her features were nevertheless lovely, and probably would have been more so in a silken dress; but her hair was bound beneath a turban of twisted cloth wrapped around her head, and the slender column of a graceful white throat was thrown into relief against the velvety darkness of the evening sky and the ragged, dusty clothing she wore. Long dark tunics were layered over a quilted skirt and under-dress to just above her ankles; had she given a full inventory of her dress, long-johns and small drawers were worn beneath the skirt and long, embroidered tunics, over which she wore a long belted jacket. Across her front several embellished straps bound leather bundles, a bed-roll and scabbards for more weaponry to her back.

In the oiled leather pack she carried a bow, a full quiver of arrows, no fewer than three long knives, and a great sword, forged by the High Elves in a lost age of the world. Gauntlets over her forearms glinted in the soft amber light of his porch-light, one concealing another blade, the one strapped to her left arm embellished on the inner-forearm with a strip of scarred leather; her fore- and middle-finger on her right hand were half-covered with fraying leather, protecting her fingertips and her palm from a bow's string. Bilbo caught glimpses of detail in her clothing, the intricate geometric embroidery on the hems of her tunics, the hints of glossy honey-coloured fur shining beneath a weathered cloak, the rich woven detail on the hem of an underskirt, the glint of _maille_ rings beneath her jacket, the neckline of a delicately-hemmed white under-dress.

Mr Baggins could do naught but stare. At the end of his tether after the excitement and unexpectedness of his interrupted suppertime, the woman's appearance in the light of his hall-lamps, slender-throated, pale-skinned, solemn but beautiful despite her ragged clothing and strangely-bound head, left him in awe.

"Good evening," she said quietly, and there was a surprising gentleness to her voice, rich and warm, despite her rather ragged physical appearance. She looked to Bilbo as if she had just staggered from a battlefield, and to tell the truth his guess was not far off.

"At you and your family's," Mr Baggins spluttered, flushing hotly. The woman quirked one slender dark eyebrow, and Bilbo jumped as someone giant approached from his parlour; Gandalf.

"Ah, and here you are at last," he said warmly, smiling at the woman, who, to Bilbo's surprise, gestured to Mr Gandalf in the Elvish fashion, with some very pretty words in the Elvish tongue, of which Bilbo caught nothing but 'Mithrandir', which sounded to him like a name.

"Ilá, welcome to the home of the esteemed Master Baggins," Gandalf said, smiling warmly at the solemn woman.

As she stepped over the threshold, the tip of her bow and the hilt of her sword scraping subtly against the curved ceiling of Bilbo's hall, she inclined her head politely; and the lamplight threw into effect her full appearance, making him gasp and jump back. Incredibly fine, fair eyes glowed like lit coals in the warm amber of his hall, but a shining pink scar on the left side of her face, jagging from temple to throat, gave her otherwise entrancing features a dangerous, devilish look.

"Master Baggins, may I introduce Ilá, shield-maiden of the Dúnedain," Gandalf said warmly, gazing upon the woman as she unbuckled the pack across her back and set her bow, sword and, Bilbo counted with weakening knees, no fewer than four smaller knives (which, to him, resembled broad-swords in size) and, indeed, a shield, battered and war-scarred, small and round, worked with the motif of a many-pointed star in shining silver, something Bilbo had the presence of mind to think was rather too decorative for a shield that had obviously seen battle if the dents and scars were anything to judge by, yet it was the silver star that bore not a scratch to its surface. The star on the shield echoed the design of the brooch pinning her cloak in place at her shoulder.

Bilbo was left to stagger and close his front-door as Mr Gandalf and the tall lady meandered off—she was twice the height of Mr Baggins, and was indeed a lady, for though he was used to the merry women of The Shire with their ringlets and furry feet, Bilbo immediately saw there was an attitude in her bearing that was not quite befitting her inferior clothing. Though not tall compared to men, she was undoubtedly to Bilbo a striking figure, with long legs, a very slender waist bound in embellished leather, long, elegant fingers and her back straight, shoulders thrown back proudly, her head held high, the column of her white throat incredibly elegant.

He heard the soft, rich feminine voice issuing from the kitchen, and stifling a whimper at the thought of his cellars now being emptied after the pillaging of his larders, Bilbo scuttled to the kitchen, finding Mr Gandalf aiding the woman in scrambling several eggs with a bit of cheese, some tomatoes and some of the most beautiful mushrooms, fresh from a little burlap bag, with a little bit of bacon and a sausage. Half-hiding in the threshold of his own kitchen, Bilbo gazed at the woman; she was again speaking to Mr Gandalf in the tongue of the Elves.

How could a ragged woman with a wicked scar and a battered shield know the language of the Elves? He listened, lulled by the beautiful warmth of the language, and the smell of the fried bacon and mushrooms; a small plate was pressed into his hands, a full fry-up, while a little teacup was offered between the slender, bruised fingers of the strange, scarred woman as she and Mr Gandalf navigated the doorway out of the kitchen. Bilbo gazed down at the plate and steaming cup of tea, his knees feeling a little weak, and he scuttled, a little dazed, after the wizard and his awe-inspiring guest. He perched in the corner of his own dining-room, quiet as a mouse, nibbling on the supper the shield-maiden had given him a portion of, watching the dwarves react to the presence of a lady in their company.

Bilbo noticed she sat close to Bofur, with the scarred side of her face to the hallway, none of the dwarves able to see the damage that had him engrossed; the scar was such that Bilbo couldn't stop staring at it, a sickening and enthralling sight. The injury she had sustained must have been a grievous one to leave such a scar, and he noticed her wince and place a hand carefully to her right thigh once, before returning to her supper.

Dwarves among ladies, Bilbo discovered, were very much as they were amongst themselves; perhaps they did not notice her, or perhaps they were thrown off by the bound hair, the ragged dress; either way the dwarves still laughed raucously and talked lewdly amongst themselves, despite the coolness Bilbo found disarming, which seemed to emanate from the lady, watching the dwarves all but ignore her as she delicately ate from her little plate with fingers and knife. Perhaps they did not regard her as a lady; that the raiment and toughened nature of her appearance gave the false impression that she was a warrior like them. Perhaps she was; in any case, she blended better with the battle-hardened, tattooed, hairy, furred, axe-wielding dwarves than Bilbo ever could!

Perhaps because she sat on the very edge of the dining-room and did so in dark clothing, blending with the shadow of the corners of the room, they didn't notice her. But Bilbo did, and he couldn't stop gazing at her from his perch behind Gandalf, as she spoke quietly with him, in the Common Tongue, about a war in Rohan and a king named Théngol, while the dwarves laughed raucously and joked lewdly, teasing the two youngest-looking of their company, the redhead Ori and the dark, handsome Kíli who was perhaps as rowdy as the two brothers, Balin and Dwalin, who had not seen each other for an age and enjoyed catching up over the head of Óin with his ear-horn and Glóin with his enormous beard and even longer russet hair.

The lady did not seem uncomfortable among the presence solely of men; in fact it seemed only Bilbo was unnerved by the raucous gathering in his dining-room, put off by the atrocious table-manners of his unwanted guests as they had a belching contest—won indisputably by the youngest, Ori, who belched with proud gusto, frowned at by silver-haired Dori, who would have upbraided the younger of his two brothers had they not been in company. Raucous laughter of the, to Bilbo, impromptu congregation echoed in the polished halls of Mr Baggins' cosy little hole, and as several of the dwarves left their seats to refill plates, put frying-pans on the stove, raid the kitchen-cupboards for sweet morsels and wash up earthenware mugs and Bilbo's delicate port-glasses, his nerves were stretched to their limits, the odd-haired Nori using one of his mother's hand-crocheted doilies as a dishrag to clean beetroot juice—_beetroot juice_! On his _mother's_ crochet!—from a hand-glazed bowl.

"Excuse me! That is a _doily_, not a dishcloth!"

"But it's full of holes!" Bofur remarked bemusedly, frowning at Bilbo as he whirled like a dervish around the kitchen with its warm stove, tiled ceiling and dried herbs.

"It's supposed to look like that," Bilbo replied flatly; "It's crochet."

"Oh, and a wonderful game it is, too," Bofur smirked playfully, "if you've got the balls for it!"

"Bebother and confusticate these dwarves!" Bilbo swore, about to start knocking his head against the wall as Bofur and several of the other dwarves—Bilbo only knew Bofur's name due to his pleasant voice and smiling personality; the brothers Fíli and Kíli in their finer, embroidered clothing; and young Ori, who had arrived bearing no weapon but a slingshot, taking Bilbo momentarily back to the days of his youth as a lad exploring the rolling hills for fairies, trailing twigs and fireflies back to his mother's supper-table in the twilight.

"My dear Bilbo, what on earth is the matter?" asked someone, and a long swathe of grey wool moved toward Bilbo from the corner of his eye; as Gandalf stooped further into the kitchen, overseeing Nori's return of Bilbo's silver serving-spoons—part of a cutlery set gifted as a wedding-present from Old Took to his daughter Belladonna on her marriage to Bungo Baggins—to their proper place in the polished, velvet-lined wooden box with the dainty golden clasp, and Bilbo staggered after the wizard in disbelief.

"What's the matter?" he gasped. "I am _surrounded_ by dwarves. What are they doing here?" he added on a frustrated whisper, as Nori and Bofur started a tussle over a length of sausages Bilbo had had delivered from the butcher yesterday morning.

"Oh, they're quite a merry gathering," Gandalf said warmly, "once you get used to them."

"I—don't—want—to—get—used—to—them!" Bilbo hissed, leading Gandalf by his robe to the doorway. "Look at the state of my kitchen! There's mud trod into my carpet, they—they—they've _pillaged_ the pantry—I'm not even going to tell you what they've done in the bathroom, they've all but _destroyed_ the plumbing! I don't understand what they're doing in my house!"

"Excuse me," said a quiet, uncertain voice, and Bilbo, hands on hips and fuming, frustrated beyond belief and facing the daunting prospect of refilling his pantry—having enjoyed _none_ of his recent spoils from the market—half-jumped as young Ori shuffled into view shyly holding a sullied dinner-plate. "Sorry to interrupt…but what should I do with my plate?"

"Here you go, Ori, give it to me," said a warm, pleasant voice, but Bilbo's mouth dropped in complete horror as the straight-shouldered Fíli, recognisable as the only blonde dwarf amongst the large gathering, taller than Bilbo by a head and twice as wide in his fur-trimmed coat, took hold of the plate as if it were a bit of tat and tossed it down the corridor—Gandalf dodging out of the way as quickly as his size in the squat little hobbit-hole allowed him to—to his brother, grinning, playful young Kíli, who then reminded Bilbo so much of the hooligan young hobbit-boys who frequently found amusement in pelting unwary passersby with conkers that he wished to give the dwarf a sharp clip round the ear.

Another plate followed the first—then another; the dwarves seemed united in their attempt to drive Bilbo to an early grave, or at the very least a nervous breakdown over the smashing of his mother's finest china. "Excuse me! That's my mother's West Farthing pottery; it's over a hundred years old!"

Grinning, Fíli bounced two bowls off his shoulders before flinging them toward his brother, who tossed them to someone unseen in Bilbo's kitchen—where, only two hours ago, Bilbo had been about to sit down to his solitary fish supper—and the dwarves nestled around the dinner-table started to stamp their heavily-booted feet, the ring of cutlery scraping against itself cutting to Bilbo's marrow as the dwarves chuckled and watched Fíli catch each plate with a different flourish.

The shield-maiden remained resolutely out of the way, with, Bilbo noticed, a tiny smile illuminating her velvety-dark eyes despite a twinge that shivered across her face when she listed to the side on the chair she had moved just inside the pantry. Young Ori watched Fíli and Kíli's display of dinnerware acrobatics with the delighted innocence of a child, but the stamping, the ring of the cutlery, finest West Farthing china flying through the air, the mud caked into his hand-woven rug, the prospect of having to clean the bathroom, the _empty_ nature of his pantry (unheard of) it was all too much; on top of an almost-empty stomach, Bilbo reached the end of his tether.

"C-can you not do that! You'll blunt them!" he snapped angrily at the four dwarves stamping their feet and ringing the knives, pounding the forks upon the polished table.

"Ooh, d'you hear that, lads? He says we'll blunt the knives!" cooed Bofur with delighted indifference.

"_Blunt the knives, bend the forks_—" sang Kíli in a deep voice, his broad, handsome face illuminated with delight as his brother tossed him another plate;

"_Smash the bottles and burn the corks_—" Fíli grinned, bouncing a plate off his elbows and sending it toward his brother; Bilbo tried to dive for it but—too late, another plate and a bowl made their way into the kitchen via Kíli.

"_Chip the glasses and crack the plates…!_" the other dwarves joined in joyously. "_That's what Bilbo Baggins hates_!"

"_Cut the cloth and tread on the fat,_

_Leave the bones on the bedroom-mat!_

_Pour the milk on the pantry-floor,_

_Splash the wine on every door!_

_Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl,_

_And when you've finished, if any are whole,_

_Send them down the hall to roll!_

_That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!_"

As Bilbo pushed his way past Fíli, Ori and Nori, frustrated to tears, hungry and irritable, wishing he had never good-morninged Gandalf, let alone opened his door to Dwalin, his eyes fell upon the kitchen-table, whereupon numerous columns of freshly-washed crockery—seemingly every piece of fine china and glazed earthenware Bilbo owned—were precariously piled. His expression seemed to amuse the dwarves to no end as they laughed raucously, drinking his fine _Green_ _Dragon_ ale out of his newly-polished tankards. Each of the dwarves, laughing at him, was chuckling something he could not hear, each voice overriding the others, even Gandalf, smiling around his pipe, was chuckling something incoherent.

The only thing that cut through the noise was a loud knocking on Bilbo's front-door. It wasn't the gentle but purposeful knock of the shield-maiden, who smiled in on the rowdy kitchen congregation from the doorway into the hall; it had sounded as if someone had used a battering-ram to break down Bilbo's beautiful freshly-painted green door.

Silence fell like a thick fog, all eyes darting quickly to each other, features growing solemn, darkening, a shared breath held in anticipation.

Quietly, Gandalf said simply, "He is here."

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**A.N.**: Please review! I've had this idea in my head since the trailer for _The Hobbit_ came out over a year ago, and now that I've seen it three times in the cinema, the dwarves are all clamouring (as only dwarves can) for me to write the story! Also, I think I want the dwarves' and Bilbo's journey to start in late-August, because I love autumn—the food, the clothes, hot spiced apple-juice, conkers, _snuggling_, the turning leaves…


	2. A Shield-Maiden's Sewing

**A.N.**: I promised a playlist for the beginning of this chapter, songs that inspired me whilst dreaming up plots.

'Tell Me Who You Are' _Doctor Who_ season six

'Sibylla', 'Burning the Past' _Kingdom of Heaven_

'Elysium', 'Now We Are Free' _Gladiator_

'He's a Pirate' _Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl_

'Shooting Star', 'Septimus', _Stardust_

'Young Tristan', _Tristan + Isolde_

A Historic Love', _The Tudors_

'Victoria and Albert', _The Young Victoria_

'All of Them!' (7:00-end of song) _King Arthur_

'An Irish Party in Third Class' from _Back to Titanic_

And of course the entire _Lord of the Rings _trilogy soundtrack plus that of _The_ _Hobbit_.

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**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_02_

* * *

_Another dwarf_, Bilbo squeaked silently. Not another! He could not quite face opening his door to yet another dwarf—the way his 'guests' were glancing at each other with important frowns and wide-eyes (that was Ori in his knitted cardigan), Bilbo assumed it could only be another dwarf—but packed into the kitchen as he was like sardines amongst dwarves, it hardly mattered; Gandalf stooped under the kitchen doorway through into the parlour, squeezing past Kíli, to pull open Bilbo's perfectly round front-door.

A wide figure, long-haired and swathed in a heavy cloak, stood on Bilbo's front-step. The dark now fully enveloping the sky, only the hall-lamps illuminated his features, which, at first glance, were almost _bored_. Dark-haired, grey glinted at his forehead, and a thick beard covered his chin but was neatly trimmed; dark eyes glinted in the lamplight, and Bilbo thought himself looking upon yet another brother of Kíli's; their features and colouring were remarkably similar. (In fact, as Bilbo would later learn, this was Fíli and Kíli's uncle, and a Very Important dwarf).

Eyes upward to meet the wizard's gaze, the dwarf on the front-porch sighed. "Gandalf. I thought you said this place would be easy to find. I lost my way…twice. Wouldn't have found it at all had it not been for the mark on the door." Striding into the hall, Bilbo was for the moment distracted by the dwarf removing with one decisive tug the heavy cloak bound around his shoulders, revealing richly-embroidered tunics, fur-covered shoulders, numerous weapons concealed on his person and a shield that seemed to be made of a polished, metal-reinforced tree-branch.

"Mark? There's no mark on that door, it was painted a week ago!" Bilbo blustered, wide-eyed. Someone had scratched his lovely door?

"There _is_ a mark, I put it there myself," Gandalf said, glancing down at Bilbo, whose jaw popped. That scratching noise he had heard upon Gandalf's departure the other day, it had been Gandalf using his staff to scratch the paint off his beautifully-painted door! "Bilbo Baggins…allow me to introduce the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield."

Behind him, without Bilbo realising, the two young dwarves, Fíli and Kíli, had been greeting the stately newcomer; richly furred, his beard neatly trimmed, he stood out with the two brothers as wealthier than the other dwarves…more kingly, Bilbo suddenly thought. Everything about their dress and choice of weapons (though Bilbo knew little of such things) was richer, finer, and now the two young dwarves, one calm and blonde, the other raucous and dark, flanked the older newcomer.

"So…" the new dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, said, staring at Bilbo in a manner that unnerved him; the dwarf stood a head taller and easily thrice as wide with the furs. "This is the hobbit. Tell me, Mr Baggins, have you done much fighting?"

"Pardon me?" Bilbo blurted.

"Axe or sword? Which is your weapon of choice?" Thorin asked.

"Well, I do have some skill with conkers, if you must know," Bilbo said, standing with his back straight and his thumbs looped in his braces. "But I fail to see…" he faltered, the imperious gaze of Mr Oakenshield unnerving him, "why that's relevant."

"I thought as much," Thorin remarked, glancing over his shoulder at the smiling Kíli and several of the other dwarves all silent to listen to him speak. "He looks more like a grocer than a burglar." The dwarves cackled and chuckled with laughter, as Bilbo, taken aback, thought, _Burglar_? Why on earth would they believe he was in the business of thieving?

As the dwarves tramped back toward the parlour, and the kitchen (Dori set a saucepan on the stove to prepare something hot for Thorin, who had journeyed far and, indeed, was Too Important to do anything menial like cook his own supper), Gandalf leaned against the tunnel entry and sighed, looking tired. Bilbo teetered where he stood, wondered where Dori would find anything to cook for Mr Oakenshield, and muttered, "Bother it!" and found himself perching on the apparatus where his barrel of ale had once been propped (Fíli and Kíli having removed it to the dining-room for easier access).

Something was found for Mr Oakenshield to eat, a bowl of hot, chunky stew and a flacon of ale with a plate of savoury crackling-scones that Bilbo was incredibly fond of, cooked bacon and caraway-seeds mixed into the dough for a marvellous accompaniment to thick soups and autumn stews, and while Dori seemed inclined to engage Bilbo in conversation about the recipe for the crackling-scones, the other dwarves all hung on to Mr Oakenshield's every word.

"What news from the meeting in Ered Luin?" white-bearded Balin asked. "Do they all come?"

"Aye," Thorin nodded. "Envoys from all seven kingdoms." A general mutter of approval greeted this statement, laughter and fists pounded on tables.

"What do the dwarves of the Iron Hills say?" Dwalin asked, leaning past Gandalf, who perched at Thorin's left-hand. "Is Dáin with us?" Bilbo, watching Thorin Oakenshield—indeed, the only dwarf he could see, squashed as he was in the doorway beside Gandalf—saw his expression fall and, with a flicker of disappointment, sighed.

"They will not come," he said heavily, to groans and sighs, the shaking of heads and wagging of beards. "They say this quest is ours, and ours alone."

"You're…going on a quest?" Bilbo spoke up, and it was so quiet they all heard him.

"Bilbo, my dear fellow, let us have a little more light," Gandalf spoke up, sounding a little surprised that Bilbo had spoken; the Tookish half of Bilbo had poked its nose up at hearing of a _quest_, and Bilbo nodded and scuttled out into his hall, seeking candles. "Far to the East, over ridges and rivers, beyond woodlands and wastelands…lies a single solitary peak." Returning with two lit candles, Bilbo peered over Mr Oakenshield's shoulder at the, to him, quite large map. Bilbo _loved_ maps! This one had cunning runes etched at the edge, with details of a forest, mountain-range, the pathways through woods and annotations of important information—'East lie the Iron Hills, where is Dáin', 'Here was Girion Lord in Dale' 'Far to the North are the Grey Mountains & the Withered Heath whence came the Great Worms' 'West lies Mirkwood the Great…there are spiders'.

"The Lonely Mountain," Bilbo read, eyes drawn to the red etching of a fire-breathing dragon hovering above the solitary peak Gandalf had referenced.

"Aye," groaned one of the dwarves, the redhead Glóin. "Óin has read the portents, and the portents say it is _time_."

"Ravens have been seen flying back to the mountain," Óin spoke up. "As it was foretold. 'When the birds of yore return to Erebor, the reign of the beast will end'." Bilbo, gathering more candles from his extra stock in the empty pantry, perked up his pointed ears…'_beast_'?

"The…what beast?" he stammered, lingering in the dining-room doorway.

"Well, that would be a reference to Smaug the Terrible," Bofur said lightly, taking his pipe from between his teeth as he gazed at Bilbo. "Chiefest and greatest calamity of our age. Airborne fire-breather. Teeth like razors, claws like meat-hooks…extremely fond of precious metals—"

"Yes, I know what a dragon is!" Bilbo snapped, wide-eyed. At the far end of the dining-room, young Ori surged to his feet.

"I'm not afraid! I'm up for it! I'll give him a taste of dwarfish iron right up his jacksie!" he declared, and to the grumbles and scowls of his brothers, he was yanked back into his seat by Dori.

"The task would be difficult enough with an army behind us," Balin spoke up, and the clamour that had arisen from Ori's declaration—and the looks exchanged by his older-brothers—subsided. "But we number just twelve. Not twelve of the best. Nor the brightest."

"Here—!"

"Who're you calling dim?!"

As Bilbo stood, quaking in the doorway, the image of a dragon bearing down on him fully aflame and its spear-like claws snicker-snacking in the light, Fíli's voice cut through the clamour. "We may be few in number, but we're fighters, all of us! To the last one!"

"And do you forget, we have a _wizard_ in our company—Gandalf will have killed _hundreds_ of dragons in his time!" Kíli declared excitedly, grinning; as Gandalf tried to speak over the rabble of dwarves eagerly requesting tales of Gandalf's great executions of fire-worms, a soft chuckle came from the kitchen. Perhaps only Bilbo heard it. Or perhaps not; Bilbo saw Fíli glance over his shoulder into the kitchen.

"Oh, well, now, I wouldn't say—"

"How many then?" Dori inquired.

"What?"

"Well, how many dragons have you killed?" Dori asked. Gandalf started coughing on his pipe-smoke, and Dori leapt from his seat. "Go on! Give us a number!"

Pandemonium reigned; dwarves, Bilbo quickly learned, were highly susceptible to finding insult in a breath of fresh air, and a dozen of them, crowded around a little table, on full bellies with his cask of ale emptied between them, were like sparks amongst dry kindling. Each leapt to their feet, brandishing fists, making threats, and, fearing for his furniture, Bilbo tried to call out for them to calm down.

"Enough!" roared Thorin Oakenshield, and each dwarf fell silent and sank back into his seat, looking rather contrite. "If we have read these signs, do you not think others will have read them too? Rumours have begun to spread…the dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years. Eyes look East to the mountain, assessing, wondering…weighing the risk. Perhaps the vast wealth of our people now lies unprotected. Do we sit back while others claim what is rightfully ours? Or do we seize this chance to take back Erebor?!"

A roar of approval greeted this declaration; Bilbo had never heard of Erebor, nor heard of dragons outside of hobbit-lore; a dragon had not been seen in the East Farthing for a thousand years! They were comfortably far-off, and therefore legendary.

"We seem," Gandalf spoke up, eyeing the congregation, "to be short one member. Where is our lady? Ilá?"

"I am listening," called a voice from the kitchen, the same one Bilbo had heard chuckle at Kíli's innocent declaration that Gandalf had slain dragons by the hundreds.

"Ilá, my dear lady, please join us," Gandalf called; he could not move to seek out the lady.

"I am afraid I have business to attend to unsuitable at the dinner-table," the voice replied politely. Bilbo scuttled toward the kitchen, fearing for his silver teaspoons, and several of the younger dwarves at the other end of the table—Fíli, Kíli, Ori and the older, hard-of-hearing Óin—poured out of the dining-room entry into the kitchen.

Sitting on his worn bench was the woman Bilbo had admitted into his hole; she had shirked several layers, which were neatly folded and piled beside her on the bench, and sat in her under-dress, an over-skirt and the bottommost of her tunics; a saucepan rested on the stove, steaming away, filling the kitchen with something sweet-smelling that set Bilbo's tense, frustrated heart at ease, and a sealed earthenware pot rested on the kitchen-table beside a frayed needle-book of embroidered linen, a little spool of black thread, a small hipflask of some potent-smelling liquid, a roll of soft white gauze bandages, and a small bowl, steaming like the saucepan, and which the lady dipped an embroidered handkerchief into before squeezing the excess water from it, dabbing at her leg.

Which was bare.

Her skirt drawn up to her hip, knitted long-johns and Fair Isle socks removed from her right leg, her bare leg glowed long and lean in the light of the stove. A nasty wound, five inches long and ragged, fiery red and angry, seeping, marred the toned length of her outer-thigh; as she set the handkerchief back into the bowl, she picked up something that glinted silver; a curved needle, dangling with black thread.

"Uh…what're you…?" Bilbo stammered; dousing the wound with enough of the strong-smelling amber liquid in her flask to kill any infection, the woman held the needle into the fire for the briefest of moments before setting to the wound with a resolute frown. Bilbo's knees felt weak as he watched the woman _sewing her wound together_. "Is that… Do you…?"

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Kíli asked, wide-eyed, staring.

"I…" Ori stared, wide-eyed, open-mouthed as the needle flashed in the firelight, candles brought close so the lady had better light to sew by. "I…" Ori blinked several times, and as Bilbo glanced from the lady to the youngest dwarf, the brothers Fíli and Kíli stared at him, and it seemed as if a line were being drawn where the blood was quickly leaving his face. "I don't feel very well…" Ori muttered, eyes on the tiny stitches the lady was sewing her wound with, and he promptly fainted.

"Oh dear," Fíli sighed, nudging Ori with his toe. Óin stepped over Ori quite unconcernedly, to sniff the contents of the sealed earthenware jar (to Bilbo, larger than he could carry in his fist, but to the lady, probably a small and insignificant piece of luggage).

"D'you reckon it was the sight of the wound or the lady's bare leg that did him?" Kíli remarked to his brother, half-hiding a grin as he nudged Ori; Fíli's lips—and the braided ends of his blonde moustache—twitched, and he glanced at the woman sitting by Bilbo's stove. As Bilbo listed against the wall—determined not to allow these young dwarves to see him faint as the youngest of their party had at the sight of a war-wound—he noticed Fíli's eyes lingered on the lady's bared leg, long, strong and pretty, and decidedly hairless (_She doesn't even have hair on her toes_! Bilbo thought, _Imagine_!).

Bilbo watched the woman sew. In the firelight, her finely-sculpted features were drawn with a pain she seemed determined not to show more than she could allow; her face illuminated, the rest of her in shadow, she looked incredibly _severe_, the shadows flickering across her features, highlighting her cheekbones, the set of her jaw as she no doubt clenched her teeth to keep from crying out in pain. Her head down, she ignored the dwarves, no doubt wishing to keep sewing and finish the job as quickly as she could.

"Boys!" someone called.

"If you're set on dragging your brother back home by his teeth," Fíli called into the dining-room, nudging Ori again with his boot, "Dori, Nori—this would be the opportune moment. Mr Baggins, d'you happen to have a dwarf-sized sack they can bung him into?"

"Er…"

"What's happened?"

"What's going on in there?"

"What lady are you speaking of, Gandalf?"

"Ilá, do please come and join us," Gandalf called softly.

The woman gave a short, impatient sigh and scowled so severely toward the dining-room, Bilbo was surprised the panelling didn't scorch.

"I am sewing up a wound, Master Gandalf," she said, with a snap like steel. "I rode directly from Edoras and encountered a small band of Orcs on the Dunland banks of the Glanduin. I wish for a moment to treat my injury."

"Ah," came Gandalf's response, perhaps a little contrite at the irritated pitch to the lady's voice—before, she had sounded warm and gentle to Bilbo; in her irritation, her voice and indeed her features were cool and hard as steel.

This was why Bilbo was not married.

"How many did you kill?" Gandalf asked. The woman paused for a heartbeat in her sewing, looking thoughtful, as if the question were absurd, her eyebrows lifting subtly to relax her face prettily.

"All of them," she said, without conceit. A chuckle came from the dining-room.

"I should expect no less," Gandalf remarked.

"What's happened to Ori?" called a voice, and Dori with his intricately-plaited hair appeared in the doorway. He sighed and shook his head at the sight of his youngest brother splayed spread-eagled on Bilbo's tiled kitchen-floor. "Oh, Ori."

"We cannot decide whether it was the sight of blood or a lady's bare legs that rendered him faint," Fíli remarked, smirking playfully as he glanced at Dori.

"Both, I imagine," Dori sighed.

"What should we do with him?" Kíli asked, nudging Ori, who remained resolutely unconscious.

"Oh… Just leave him there," Dori said, returning to the dining-room without a second-glance, and the other dwarves in the dining-room laughed. Bilbo staggered to the other bench at his table and sank onto it, as the lady finished her sewing, used a pocket-knife the size of Bilbo's forearm to cut the knotted thread and once again used the handkerchief to clean the wound; he watched her pause, reaching to fill his teapot with the singing tea-kettle, pouring two cups of tea, one of which she gave a generous dose of the amber liquid she had used on her leg, before reaching for the little pot. Óin was rustling amongst the contents of his pockets, filled as they were with pots of ointment, dried herbs, vials of liquid, and he pulled three leaves, in appearance like those of the bay-tree, from a leather sleeve.

"Here, lass, bind these over the poultice," he said, handing her the leaves, and the lady glanced up, first at his face, then the leaves. Her severe expression softened exponentially as she smiled and took the leaves; after scooping a generous amount of putty-like ointment from her jar, she spread it over the stitched wound, leaving a shining border an inch thick either side; placing the leaves directly over the stitches, she wiped her finger on her handkerchief and reached for the snowy bandage, carefully binding the leaves in place over the ointment.

"Thank you, Master Dwarf," the lady, Ilá, said, as she sighed with relief and started pulling her long-johns on; wiggling into them, she tugged on a pair of socks knitted in the Fair Isle style, then tugged on her boots, which were heavy, almost dwarvish in style, lined with fur and with steel-capped toes, thick leather soles and designed with protective metal shin-guards. They were the kind of boots worn by warriors used to hard living in the wilds of the world. Bilbo had never seen a woman sew an injury with her own steady hands.

She drank her tea in two sips, offered Bilbo the other cup, and cleared up her things into a small leather pack that she buckled as like a belt around her waist, settling the pouch quite nicely at the small of her back. Then she emptied the contents of his saucepan, rinsed it out, and left it to dry on the draining-board; Bilbo carried his tea as he followed the lady out into the hall, for more space and breathing-room to observe the meeting of the dwarves; Fíli and Kíli sat back down in their places, leaving poor Ori on the kitchen-floor.

Balin was saying, "You forget, the front-gate is sealed. There is no way into the mountain."

"That, my dear Balin, is not entirely true," Gandalf said softly, and silence fell amongst the muttering dwarves as he pulled from the depths of his grey robe an intricate key, geometric and decidedly dwarvish in design. To Bilbo it looked huge; it was the same size as Gandalf's thick fingers. But to the dwarves it was undoubtedly a cunning-looking thing, small and discreet.

"How came you by this?" Thorin breathed.

"It was given to me by your father, by Thráin," Gandalf said, and all around the table, the dwarves sat up a little straighter; the fate of their king in exile had long been debated and mourned, ever since the great battle to reclaim Moria, which only those amongst the eldest in the party could remember, let alone had survived. "For safekeeping. It is yours, now."

"If there is a key…" Fíli said wonderingly, glancing from the key now in Thorin's hands to Gandalf, "where is the door that belongs to it?" Using his pipe, Gandalf pointed to the map still spread on the dining-table, illuminated by candles; dwarvish runes annotating the left-hand edge of the map, a hand illustrated as pointing to the western face of the mountain, which featured a small rune.

"These runes speak of a hidden passage to the lower-halls," Gandalf said.

Grinning eagerly, clapping a hand on his brother's back, Kíli whispered, "There's another way in."

"Well, if we can find it," Gandalf corrected, "But dwarf doors are invisible when closed." There was a murmur of disappointment, one of the dwarves remarked that the secret-door may have once been unknown, but the dragon Smaug had dwelled in Erebor long enough to root out all secret passages in and out of the kingdom.

"He may have learned of it, in his earliest days," Gandalf acquiesced, "but certainly never used it. Especially after devouring so many dwarves and the maidens of Laketown, of which he was particularly fond. See the runes, here? 'Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast'. Not even when he was a new-hatched worm could Smaug have used such a tunnel."

"It seems a great big hole to me," piped up Bilbo, frowning thoughtfully at the map again.

"Indeed!" Gandalf half-smiled. "And this, my dear boy, is where you come in." He gave the dwarves, who had been chuckling and muttering about Bilbo's size—or relative lack thereof—such a stern look under his bushy eyebrows that they fell silent. "Hobbits are incredibly light on their feet, and, used as he is to the smell of _dwarf_, the scent of hobbit will be completely unknown to Smaug. That gives us, and our Burglar, a wonderful element of surprise."

Bilbo's mouth _popped_ as his jaw dropped, gaping at Gandalf, but he was beyond speech. Bilbo, use a secret tunnel down into the bowels of a dwarf-kingdom, the lair of a man-devouring dragon that may or may not still be alive?

The dwarves seemed to be mulling this over, the element of surprise having a hobbit Burglar would give them when the time came to do reconnaissance work within the great halls and chambers of the dwarf-fortress.

"That is why I insisted on a thirteenth member in your company," Gandalf continued. "To remedy your fears over bringing upon your party bad-luck, I sent word to my friend Ilá here."

"The woman?" Thorin spoke up, and as he did so, his deep, bitter timbre silenced the other dwarves, several of whom (Balin and Bofur) frowned at his impolite tone, the others glancing at Ilá as she perched at the edge of the dining-room on a step-ladder Bilbo used to reach the higher shelves in his pantry. The left-side of her face was again concealed from the dwarves' view, so they could not see her wicked battle-scar; but given the number of weapons she had arrived bearing, Bilbo would never have dared give her cheek, the way Mr Oakenshield had just spoken so disrespectfully of her, in front of her.

"Ilá is shield-maiden of the Dúnedain," Gandalf said, giving Thorin a stern glare beneath his bushy eyebrows. "As Ranger of the North her knowledge of the Misty Mountains and the Edge of the Wild is second to few. You could find no greater asset; she has many friends in the Wild who could give aid on your journey."

Mr Oakenshield turned in his seat to address Ilá, half-hidden in shadow, giving her a suspicious glare. "And what is your interest in our quest?"

The coolness of Ilá's expression as she gazed back at Thorin would have made Bilbo's knees quake; her dark eyes slowly took in his features, the distrustful glint in his hard eyes, the way he seemed to assess her, both in terms of her trustfulness and her capability. Bilbo noticed there were no female dwarves among the party; as with most cultures, it seemed the dwarves held the same belief that women, the gentler sex, weren't up to much when fighting and hard-living was involved.

After a moment, gazing back at Thorin with an unmistakably cool look, Ilá glanced at Gandalf, addressing him with a tiny smile. "Mithrandir asked me to accompany your party," she said. Turning back to Thorin, she said with an icy bite, "And before I commit to risking life and limb, it is _I_ whose questions need answering."

"Indeed?" Thorin glowered.

"This quest… Is it revenge and gold you seek to gain, or do you set forth to reclaim the home of your people?" Ilá asked sternly.

"I am answerable to none, least of all a ragged Ranger," Thorin growled coolly.

"You will answer me. I will not risk my life to fill your coin-purse, Master Dwarf, nor condone the risk your friends take for you," Ilá said icily, sitting straight-backed, her shoulders thrown back, gazing down at the dwarf. Bilbo glanced from her scarred face to Thorin, who looked taken aback by the cool, regal tone with which she spoke. Had he expected, as her dusty dress would implicate, she was little more than a hardened maiden from a desolated farmers' village? "Do you value the lives of this company and your people above the dragon's stolen hoard?"

Thorin's jaw worked, anger festering in his dark eyes. "Of course."

Ilá examined his features carefully, then with a quiet sigh, said, "Well, your answer is true enough now… We shall see."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Thorin snapped. Ilá fixed him with a look reminiscent of an eagle locking on to its prey.

"King Thrór's insatiable hunger for gold is not unknown to me, Thorin, son of Thráin," she said calmly. "I know the power gold has once the love for it grips a dwarf's heart."

"As such, I invited Ilá to be our lucky fourteenth," Gandalf spoke up, before the dwarves could grumble and descend into an argument, "and the voice of common-sense amongst you when I am disposed to be elsewhere."

At that, the dwarves exploded in uproar at the perceived (and intended) insult.

It is generally believed that men lack the same quotient of good sense their female counterparts are graced with; and a company of over a dozen males setting out on an adventure would no doubt come to some sort of trouble a woman's wisdom could easily prevent.

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**A.N.**: Thank you for the reviews, and for adding this story to your list of Alerts, I appreciate it. There will be deviations from _The Hobbit_ with regards to plot, also I'd like to start their adventure off in late-August, for no other reason than because there are better veggies available at that time! And autumn means cold evenings which means _snuggling_.


	3. The Dangers Associated with Adventures

**A.N.**: I've been reading Jamie Oliver's _Jamie's Italy_, and the photographs of the food, combined with the movie _Kingdom of Heaven_, purple tartan, Royal jewellery and pomegranates has me wanting to make Dale a sort of Mediterranean-meets-Russian sort of culture, with the rich food traditions including 'sea'-food from the lake, pasta, 'exotic' crops like olives, pomegranates, figs and grapes, the fur hats you see in the clip in the beginning of _Hobbit_, also strongly influenced by dwarf customs enmeshed with the cultures of Men due to such close proximity.

Also, I couldn't get the image of the Brigadier playing 'soldiers' with Granddad in _Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang_, the river Robin and Morgan Freeman cross in _Prince of Thieves_,or the clip in _Lilo and Stitch_ where Nani climbs on top of the dryer Lilo's hiding in, scooping her up in a towel! Also, yellow heritage-tomatoes, salad Nicoise, strudel and _Hairy Bikers'_ meatloaf, their Hungarian crackling-scones and goulash, plus stuffed-mushrooms, plum tart (anyone who has read my other stories knows I'm heavily influenced by food!)

I should probably also note that I have removed Bombur from the party. The way they have portrayed Ori in the film, as the sweet, rather naïve young baby-brother, will suit my purposes wonderfully for plot deviances.

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**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_03_

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"Give them the contracts," Thorin barked, and from the pockets of his coat, Balin produced two packets of coarse parchment scribbled with tiny writing. Thankfully not dwarvish runes; as Bilbo spluttered, Ilá accepted one of the papers and opened it fully, frowning as she examined the legal niceties.

"We're off!" Bofur grinned, and the other dwarves chortled.

"It's just the usual," Balin said, handing Bilbo his copy. "Summary of out-of-pocket expenses, time-required, remuneration, funeral-arrangements, so forth…"

"Funeral-arrangements?" Bilbo spluttered, as Ilá carefully read each paragraph twice. The actions of the dwarves at the end of their quest, should all be successful and all they hoped occur, would speak louder than promises now; upon gaining the treasure-hoard of Erebor, would they bear to part with a brass-ring, even to someone who had helped them gain the gold?

Dwarves were by nature more generous in word than in bond, and were notorious for it amongst the various peoples of Middle Earth who had had dealings with them. The same could be said of Men and Elves, given any situation; the Men cursed by Isildur were evidence of that, and even the great elven-king Thranduil, whom Ilá had met on several occasions in the forests of Mirkwood, had erred for ill, earning the enduring hatred of an entire race when he neglected to give aid to the dwarf-refugees of Smaug's desolation of Erebor.

As it was, Ilá hardly thought of the fabled treasures of Erebor; she had treasures enough, hers alone, but there was more at play than the accumulation of a legendary wealth in this quest. The assassination of one of the last dragons on Middle Earth, an evil, wicked fire-worm from the Withered Heath…put to use by the darker forces, there was no telling what destruction a dragon could wreak. Erebor, and the once-merry little kingdom of Dale were but a taste of the dragon's destructive power. As Ilá examined her contract for loopholes and the blank spaces for her to fill in—living children; relatives to whom her share of any treasure found should be delivered in the event of her death; preferred method of burial (including but not limited to funeral-pyres, burial-mounds, burning-boats, even, if the manner of her death befitted it, royal entombment in the dwarvish tradition) and a waiver preventing liability to any other member of the company for injuries sustained—Thorin stood from his chair, sidling closer to Gandalf to murmur darkly, "I cannot guarantee his safety."

"Understood," Gandalf nodded, and Ilá glanced up from her paper.

"Nor will I be responsible for his fate," Thorin added. After a moment, Gandalf nodded.

"Agreed."

"'Terms: Cash on delivery up to but not exceeding one-fourteenth of total profit, if any'…that seems fair… Er… 'Present company shall not be liable for injuries inflicted by or sustained as a consequence thereof including but not limited to…lacerations…evisceration… _Incineration_'?"

"Oh, aye! He'll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye," Bofur nodded, smiling merrily. Bilbo blinked frantically, trying to inhale sufficiently.

"You alright, laddie?" Balin asked; he, Glóin and Bofur each gazed at Bilbo.

"Yeah, I f-feel…" Bilbo stammered, hands on his knees, "…feel a bit faint."

"Think furnace…with wings," Bofur said gleefully, rising from his seat, and Ilá concealed a smile, laughing silently, as she set her contract in her lap, watching Mr Baggins' reaction. Bofur caught her eye and grinned, winking roguishly, before glancing back at the hobbit.

"Air, I n-need air," Bilbo gulped.

"Flash of light, searing pain, and then, _poof_!" Bofur said cheerfully, grinning. "You're nothing more than a pile of ash!"

"You are wagering on Mr Baggins reaching Erebor itself. At the very least he shall have to fight his way past bands of Orcs," Ilá said softly, glancing at Bofur, winking subtly, before looking back at Bilbo. "The wild is rife with them. Goblins, too. Though they'd likely take him as a slave to work to death in their caves."

"Tasty morsel he'd make for the goblins' Wargs, too," Bofur said, eyes widening as he glanced at Ilá, winking subtly, and she kept a straight face as she nodded. "A plump hobbit would make a lovely change from Orc-meat."

"Very well-fed, plenty of exercise," Ilá nodded thoughtfully, eyeing Mr Baggins, whose knees seemed to be going weak. Privately she enjoyed watching the effect her words had on comfortable Mr Baggins, and to those who knew her, Ilá had a devilish sense of humour that Bofur at least, she sensed, would appreciate. And she was able to wind up people like Mr Baggins whilst keeping a punishingly straight face, completely serious. She wasn't solemn and severe by nature, but in the company of men it was sometimes better to first appear hard, and soften as time went on, than to waste efforts in trying to gain their respect and appreciation. "One swallow, it'll all be over. You'd never even feel it."

"Unless they each wanted a piece," Bofur added, and Ilá nodded.

"Nope!" Bilbo blurted, and promptly fainted.

"Oh, that was very helpful, Bofur," Gandalf sighed, his bushy eyebrows twitching as he glanced from the dwarf to Ilá. "Am I to separate the two of you?"

"There's a great measure of truth in what we said," Ilá said softly, her lips twitching as she leaned down to gently slap Mr Baggins' cheeks to rouse him. "He shouldn't leap into the venture without appreciating the greatest dangers he will most likely face. If we make it to the Desolation—all of us, with all our bits and pieces still attached—we shall be incredibly fortunate indeed. The world has grown darker and more dangerous within the last score years, even."

"True enough, we must all face the reality of our quest," Balin sighed, and Ilá glanced over at him as he watched the reviving Mr Baggins with a heavy expression. "If we survive the wild unscathed, at the end of our journey we must still face the greatest danger any of us will ever encounter, as fierce and real a threat as Durin's Bane itself… It would be foolish to hope Smaug has withered with time, as we have." Balin sighed, the lamplight glinting off his white beard.

Ilá had grown up listening to tales, passed down through the female line to her mother, stories of the dwarves' kingdom under the mountain, the great king, the legends of Durin, the feasts of Dale and the legendary toy-market, even learning the now-derelict dances enjoyed by the people of Dale, the festival-customs, and even learning a little of the dwarves' language. Once upon a time, the kingdoms of Erebor and Dale had been bound fast in friendship, the wealth of each growing as the dwarves mined deeper and the Men cultivated the lands around the solitary peak.

She did not know if any of the Dwarves present had visited the Lonely Mountain since the Desolation; she herself had come only as close as Laketown, and until Mithrandir had sent word to her she had not anticipated ever going any closer to the dragon's lair than that.

Slapping Mr Baggins' face gently, he roused and moaned, eyes glinting in the candlelight. "There you are," she said softly, and graced him with a gentle smile. He stared back at her; Ilá canted her head to one side, noting Mr Baggins did not move to sit up. "Perhaps a cup of tea might settle your nerves?"

"Or a little Old Toby," Gandalf remarked; Bilbo was set up in his armchair before the fire in the parlour, with a steaming cup of tea and his little pipe. Males of any race, Ilá knew, were incredibly fond of pipe-weed; indeed, when Mr Baggins was set up with his little pipe, the dwarves took occasion to carve the remnants from their own pipes and refill them with fresh pipe-weed—from a stock of Longbottom leaf one of the dwarves had picked up from a farmer on the road into Hobbiton.

The dwarves scattered throughout Mr Baggins' cosy little hole; some enjoying scones in the kitchen where Dori had made them fresh for Ori, now recovered, to settle his nerves; some in the dining-room smoking their pipes and making marvellous smoke-rings that went wherever they were told; some in Mr Baggins' study with his lovely collection of book-bound maps; and some sampling the vast collection in his wine-cellar.

Ilá found herself a little engraved blanket-box to perch on in the hall, her leg soothed by the poultice and the leaves bound beneath the soft white bandage, and she pulled out again her little needle-book and several spools of thread from her clever little leather belted-pouch, to darn several other garments she carried, rolled up tight, in her pack. It had taken her six days' hard ride to reach Hobbiton, with only a few brief pauses; and she was less familiar with the rolling hills and pretty little rivers of The Shire than she was the precarious ridges of the Misty Mountains and the impenetrable gloom of Mirkwood, the vast grasslands of the Rohirrim.

The inhabitants of The Shire were a singularly cheerful, kind race; hobbits all shared a love of things that grow. They loved above all things peace, quiet, and good tilled earth, numerous meals a day, and on birthdays gave others gifts instead of receiving them. If all Middle Earth shared the same love of growing things, full bellies and peace beside a crackling hearth, Ilá would soon have found herself, as a Ranger, quite blissfully redundant.

But they weren't; and the dwarves weren't the only race with their royal line in exile. War was endemic; heroes and great Warriors fighting each other, fighting for wealth, land; kings sent their men to war against marching evil soldiers of the deserts; villagers futilely armed themselves against increasing Orc raids; trolls pillaged farms; beneath the mountains, goblins multiplied in the dark; and ever the great wood on the eastern face of the Misty Mountains grew gloomier with the vast webs of Ungoliant's gruesome many-legged children. Ilá saw some of the very worst of Middle Earth, but, over the years, infrequently taking her turn to guard The Shire, Ilá had watched chuckling grandfathers teach little hobbit-boys how to play conkers, hobbit-mothers teaching their daughters how to bake sweet mince-pies and bind wreaths of autumnal foliage and berries to decorate their bound curls during the harvest-festivals, tending their little hillside allotments full of growing things in the springtime when colour burst from the richly-tilled earth. She was thankful beyond anything that there were at least some parts of Middle Earth where the influence of evil was forever fended off by many, single acts of kindness, and love.

There would forever be nastiness and pain, but Ilá had seen firsthand how small acts of kindness could affect many lives. There was an innocence in hobbits of The Shire that was lost in most other peoples of Middle Earth; the halflings were a queer and wonderful folk, even if their chairs were _very_ small.

Halflings did not, Ilá knew, appreciate _adventures_. They made one late for supper, and hobbits had a marvellous tradition of multiple meals every day, second-breakfasts, after-supper morsels, elevenses and afternoon-tea, second-dinners and a fat luncheon. She had learned all there was to learn about hobbit-culture in less than three months during her first tenure as warden of the border; but it was foolish not to expect the unpredictableness of Took-blood. Gandalf himself had sent many a young hobbit-lad over the mountains and across the seas, sometimes never to return, or if they did, never as the same comfortable hobbit they had once been.

Though he sat with shaking hands curled around his teacup in the parlour, telling Gandalf he was a "…I can't just go wandering off into the blue. I am a Baggins of Bag End…" Bilbo had the blood of Old Took running through his veins; and Ilá had heard enough hobbit-lore to know Old Took was something of a legend, the oldest-living hobbit _ever_, who had retained his reputation despite going on _adventures_.

Ilá would have wagered something pretty that despite his misgivings and nervous episode, Mr Baggins had more in him than met the eye; hobbits usually did, she had found. Especially when all around him didn't consider him up to much; who would not wish to prove themselves in front of such a company?

Gandalf had told her only that a company was setting out to defeat the dragon Smaug. Knowing what she did of Laketown and the Desolation, let alone the rest of the North (right down to the Rauros Falls, further south through Edoras to Gondor, the White City she had seen decades ago) he had called upon her to join the expedition. If the world was becoming more dangerous, things occurring that had not happened for an age, then the dragon posed a threat to Middle Earth greater even than it had to the peoples of Dale and Erebor one hundred and seventy-one years ago.

Though she had expected a company of dwarves, she had expected warriors. There were indeed a few amongst their number—battle-scarred Dwalin; his ancient brother Balin; Óin and Glóin perhaps—but for the most part these dwarves were…well, coal-miners, thieves…_children_. Ori, in his knitted cardigan and mittens; even the richly-dressed, slightly older Fíli and Kíli did not seem to have seen battle. Certainly they were not old enough to have taken part in the heartbreaking Battle of Azanulbizar, where so many brave dwarves had perished. They were a motley band of dwarves, each with their own agendas for reclaiming Erebor, not all of them, Ilá guessed, strictly honourable. Erebor had become their home long ago, when the Longbeards fled Durin's Bane in Khazad-dûm. And in all his talk of reclaiming Erebor, Ilá had noticed Thorin Oakenshield spoke only of the vast wealth of their people. The wealth of the kingdom; not the stronghold under the mountain itself.

Always, dwarves' thoughts returned to _treasure_.

_The reign of the beast shall end_… To what end did the dwarves seek Erebor? One-fourteenth of any treasure accumulated was to be Ilá's if all went as the dwarves hoped—whether they would give it up at the end, Ilá did not know—and yet was not the treasure of Erebor the collective wealth of all the dwarves that had been driven from the kingdom? Did not the refugees of Erebor, scattered as they were among the six other dwarf kingdoms, deserve recompense for their losses? Their homes, their livelihood…their families.

Those that would risk their lives to liberate the kingdom from Smaug undoubtedly deserved reward…but did not those that had lost most in the Desolation deserve compensation?

"A cup of tea and a fresh scone, milady?" Dori asked, approaching her with a smile, and Ilá's severe beauty melted as she set her darning in her lap and smiled.

"Thank you, Master Dwarf," she said softly, accepting the little teacup and a plate on which a scone slathered with jam and clotted cream (with the beautiful crusty bit Ilá loved) rested. She sipped her tea, watching Dori return to the kitchen to swat the flat of his knife against Kíli's hand as he tried to pilfer several scones for himself; Kíli gazed wide-eyed at the silver-haired dwarf, while Fíli smirked to himself and stole a scone while Dori's back was turned, berating Kíli.

Fíli, with his rich golden hair carefully plaited at his temples, caught Ilá's eye, glanced back at Dori (still giving his brother a telling off), and winked at her cheekily, before his eyes swept over her with a subtle, thoughtful expression, and he went off to join the smoke-ring competition in the dining-room. Ilá licked her thumb and finger of jam and clotted-cream before turning back to her darning, reinforcing the shoulders of her crimson over-dress with its split-skirt, with strips of intricately-embroidered linen lined with suede.

Her clothing was a mixture of styles and fabrics each attained through her travels, from Elven smalls to the furred tapestry-cloaks of the Icebays in the far North, dwarvish armoured tunics, the distinctive clan-specific _tartans_ of the Men in the northern mountains, and things she had sewn out of necessity, detachable hoods and translucent silk visors to guard her eyes from midges and mosquitoes, the turban binding her long hair with a length removable to cover the lower-half of her face to prevent from inhaling dust. Much like the dwarves, Ilá carried almost everything of necessity with her; everything she could need in the wild. And, aside from fresh water and foodstuffs, that meant clothing. There were months at a time when Ilá would not return to her home; and in that time, the seasons changed, she ventured into different climates, dusty grasslands and high, snowy mountain-passes, so she carried everything she needed on her person.

Ilá was used to hard-living, probably more so than several of the dwarves scattered throughout Mr Baggins' comfortable hobbit-hole, and if Gandalf had recruited her to be a guide, she had to wonder how many of the dwarves were suited to living in the wilds.

Certainly few hobbits were accustomed to hunting and foraging and sleeping on the bare earth in wind and rain. And Mr Baggins didn't know the half of it, burrowing into snow to sleep in the high passes; hidden doors in mountain caves through which goblins snuck in the darkest hours; outnumbered in surprise orc raids; the suspicion of Men in the wild parts of the world where friendship was not often freely offered. And then there were the grassy plains where only rabbits lived; mountain-passes overflowing with herbs and gravel but few if any mammals for consumption; forests overgrown with nothing wholesome to be picked or snared.

Ilá wondered whether telling Mr Baggins even more of the odds of this quest and his chances in the wild would forever attach him to his armchair; she could hear him arguing with Gandalf in the parlour… "I'm sorry, Gandalf…I can't sign this…" Mr Baggins appeared in the hall, brought up short as his eyes fell on her; Ilá gazed back at the hobbit. He teetered on his hairy toes, discomfited, and he blinked several times and half-gasped, half-spluttered, and scuttled off to his bedchamber.

"It appears we have lost our burglar," said a voice down the hall, and Ilá could see Balin's white beard glinting in lamplight, where he sat on an engraved trunk, his broad hands on his knees. He sighed. "Probably for the best…the odds were always against this. After all, what are we?" He glanced up the hall, eyeing Dori, who was offering Bofur (polishing a knife) a mug of ale. "Merchants, miners, tinkers, toy-makers… Hardly the stuff of legend."

"There are a few warriors amongst us," said another voice; Thorin, whose voice was heavy with bitterness.

"Old warriors," Balin smiled sadly.

"I will take each and every one of these dwarves over an army from the Iron Hills, for when I called upon them, they answered," Thorin said, and Ilá bit the end of her thread off with her teeth, glancing up the hall as she put her needle away. "Loyalty, honour, a willing heart. I can ask for no more than that."

Glancing around, seeing only Ilá within earshot, Balin stood up, glancing uneasily at Thorin, "You don't have to do this. You have a choice. You've done honourably by our people. You have built a new life for us in the Blue Mountains. A life of peace, and plenty… A life that is worth more than all the gold in Erebor."

"From my grandfather to my father, _this_ has come to me," Thorin said, revealing the key Gandalf had bestowed on him. "They dreamt of the day when the dwarves of Erebor would reclaim their home. There is no choice, Balin. Not for me."

The legacy of his father and grandfather drove Thorin. Perhaps this was then a selfless quest, if only for Thorin Oakenshield, exiled King Under the Mountain, if only for now.

"Then we are with you, laddie," Balin sighed. "We will see it done."

"And the woman?" Thorin asked; where he stood, he could not see her sitting on a blanket-box, but Balin could. "What do you make of her?"

Ilá tweaked an eyebrow, listening on, but Balin said, with only a small smile toward her, "It would be prudent _not_ to underestimate her."

"By which you mean I should not judge the Burglar for what he is now…but what he could be," Thorin said heavily.

"There was a time when _you_ had not proven your worth," Balin said, giving Thorin a telling look. "Before you bore that oaken shield." Thorin, she heard sigh heavily, give a soft, sad chuckle, and she glanced away as a shadow loomed in the doorway; Gandalf was trying to navigate the punishingly low ceiling, glancing after Bilbo's wake, and he sighed, glancing at Ilá before shaking his head.

"You did not believe it would be so easy to corral a hobbit into venturing over the borders?" she smiled softly, and the wizard chuckled.

"I had hoped I would not be met with such _determined_ resistance," he sighed, shaking his head, and his bushy eyebrows rose and fell expressively. Ilá chuckled softly, smiling.

"He may yet surprise us," she said thoughtfully. Pulling a face, she glanced up. "And himself. I've learned that despite all appearances, hobbits are of an unpredictable nature."

"True enough," Gandalf chuckled. "You can learn all that there is to know about hobbits in a month…and yet after a hundred years, they may still surprise you."

"And to surprise a wizard…" Ilá smiled, and Gandalf chuckled.

"How went the war?" Gandalf asked, and Ilá shrugged subtly.

"We fought. Many fell," she sighed, her features falling heavily. "Those who did survive often journeyed homeward with bits missing…"

"Have you signed your contract?" Gandalf asked, and Ilá sighed, taking the folded parchment out of a pocket deep within the folds of her clothing.

"I have…but," she said. She sighed heavily, eyeing the contract with a frown, "I dislike contractual obligations."

"No contract, no reward," Gandalf remarked, and Ilá glanced at him, and eyebrow tweaked expressively.

"Parchment can so easily be destroyed," she said softly, giving Gandalf a look that expressed her concerns over the dubiously honourable nature of dwarves when gold was concerned.

"Best keep your contract secret and safe," Gandalf remarked. Ilá sighed, glancing up and down the hall, at the two older dwarves talking quietly, at Bofur smoking his pipe musingly, the glimmer of gold reflecting off Fíli's rich blonde hair.

Speaking in the Elven tongue, she said, "_Does our path lead us through Imladris_?"

Gandalf, glancing subtly up the hall toward Thorin, replied, "_Master Oakenshield will resist assistance of the elves even if the lives of all his company depended on it_."

"_Because of Thranduil's abandonment_," she guessed, and Gandalf nodded.

"_His actions the day of the Desolation—rather, his inaction—has resonated through the dwarves of Erebor, their anger and bitterness growing with the passing years_," Gandalf said, eyeing again Thorin Oakenshield. Ilá nodded.

"Many could have been saved that day if the elves had marched on the mountain," she said quietly. "Grandmother used to talk about it…she believed Thranduil couldn't differentiate between the dwarves and their gold. Did the dwarves seek aid from the elves that day to protect their gold, or rescue their people?"

"When Smaug destroyed Dale and attacked Erebor, he routed every dwarf trapped within its halls!" A deep, bitter voice made Ilá look up; smouldering with anger, Thorin Oakenshield stood glaring at her; he had overheard her last words, and misinterpreted them. "Soldiers, maidens, lords, children. He made _sport_ of them."

He believed she had dishonoured his peoples' memory.

Giving him a very cool look, Ilá said softly, "As he did the Men of Dale, long after your people had fled the Mountain." She glanced at Gandalf. "We rise early, yes?"

"Eleven o'clock we intend to depart from the Green Dragon," Gandalf nodded. "We shall need supplies, ponies…"

"I wager Master Baggins has not rooms enough to give us all beds," Ilá said, collecting her things and standing, looming over Thorin Oakenshield and the even squatter Balin. She was not tall by any measure when standing beside Men, but over the dwarves she found herself standing a little straighter, proud to be so tall for a change.

"Aye, the lads can bunk together in the parlour," Balin said, glancing at Ilá with a small smile. "You shall have a bed."

"Thank you, Master Dwarf," she said softly, "but I shall sleep out in the gardens. It shall be one of the last warm evenings, and with the perfume of the flowers…" She inclined her head toward Balin, nodded to Gandalf, and strode to the front-door, ducking out of the way of the chandelier by the front-door to gather her weapons and packs.

Ilá adored the tradition of hobbits to live beneath the earth, preserving the beauty of the landscape, the gentle hills, sleepy streams winding through flower-specked meadows full of life, fenced allotments sprawling over their borders, cattle and chickens allowed to roam freely on the common, little lambs bounding about in springtime to the delight of the hobbit-children adoring fluffy chicks and bleating goat-kids, the sweet shaggy pony fillies. So she could exit Mr Baggins' home, tucked under the hill at Bag End, climb a few short little steps to his washing-line, and unfurl her bed-roll beneath a wonderful horse-chestnut, the sprawling roots of which were polished and worked into the design of Mr Baggins' tunnels below.

And she could hear, as she tugged her boots off and settled herself on her bed-roll, watching the glittering stars, the dwarves' deep voices in a rich, sorrowful hymn. She fell asleep to their mournful vesper, which, until the day she died she would not forget.

"_Far over the Misty Mountains cold,_

_To dungeons deep and caverns old,_

_We must away, _

_Ere break of day,_

_To find our long forgotten gold_.

_The pines were roaring on the height,_

_The winds were moaning in the night,_

_The fire was red,_

_It flaming spread,_

_The trees like torches blazed with light_."

* * *

**A.N.**: Please review! Deviations from canon will start to occur from here, but not noticeably until the troll/orc ambush.


	4. A Burglar Recruited

**A.N.**: I just watched Miranda's new episode, it made me _cry_ with laughter; "Jurassic Park in leggings!" And I am also recommitting to the Doctor. He's put his bowtie back on, the naughty boy! And _Call the Midwife_ last night was _so_ _sad_… Christmas Day television, you've got to love the specials!

I haven't decided whether I want to kill Thorin or not. I have a thing about character-deaths: I don't like them.

I believe I have missed my calling, both as a builder (my parents are having an extension, and I have huge hands to lay bricks with) and as a hobbit head-double. Because my hair has the _perfect_ hobbit-curl to it. I am so proud of how curly it is. The Lord of the Rings film enterprise has really done a lot for my hair; I used to hate its curliness, now I'm embracing it. I just wish they could've created a female hobbit/dwarf character for the film, instead of a female elf… We had Arwen and Galadriel in _LOTR_, plus Eowyn, so elves and Men have been represented by their fairer sex; even Rosie Cotton got a mention. So why can't they have a female dwarf?

I can actually imagine myself onset being kitted out by Peter Jackson's costume-department. Because of my hair they'd not even have to bother with a wig; but for some reason I imagine myself with a beard… A hobbit-dwarf hybrid; When Middle Earth Genetics Go Bad.

* * *

**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_04_

A Burglar Recruited

* * *

Ilá had risen with the dawn, the birds twittering merrily in the trees, the bees already beginning to buzz amongst Mr Baggins' flowers, early-risers tending the fields, the market already thriving by the time she wandered up from the lake. She had bathed there, dressing in fresh smalls, a freshly-washed under-dress of fine muslin, her darned crimson cotton overdress with its split skirt, her _maille_-embellished tunic lined with braided strips of leather. She left off her battered cloak and hood, her leg-warmers and belted jacket, but rolled them up tight and tucked them into her larger pack.

It was a fine morning, hinting to be one of the last fine days of August, and she hummed contentedly to herself as she dawdled back toward Bag End, using Mr Baggins' own wicker-basket to carry back the breakfast-foods she had secured from the market (amongst other things), and, finding the hobbit-hole sleepy and filled with the sounds of the dwarves' snores—twelve different pitches and volumes, a veritable orchestra, and not altogether pleasant—she tucked herself up in the kitchen, probably rousing the dwarves far better with the smell of cooking sausage, bacon, mushrooms and egg than any noise she could create to wake them.

"Good morning, my dwarves," she said pleasantly, as Bofur, Óin, Ori, Balin and Fíli poked their noses into the kitchen, sniffing tentatively and casting her a wary look.

"Well, you're a sight for sore eyes," Óin grunted, grinning at Ilá as Ori sniffed the air and sighed contentedly.

"Nothing better than a beautiful woman at a busy stove," Bofur grinned, eyeing the platter of sausages and bacon.

"Are those griddle-cakes?" Ori asked hopefully, eyeing the skillet on the stove, and Ilá smiled as she removed the little pancakes with a spatula, adding them to the pile already steaming on a fine Delftware plate alongside some freshly-made blueberry turnovers.

"They are indeed, Master Ori," she smiled. "I think we shall spare Mr Baggins' furniture and breakfast in two shifts. While the others eat you can head to the _Green Dragon_ to collect the ponies and supplies."

A shadow loomed in the other doorway; Thorin appeared, already fully-dressed, his long hair combed. "I take six eggs with my ham—fried, not poached, and mind you don't break them." Ilá, stirring the scrambled eggs in the largest frying-pan (the first batch out of four-dozen, to accommodate a dozen dwarves' large appetites) glanced up sharply, frowning coolly.

"You shall eat what you are given," she said, "and be grateful."

Ori's eyes widened as his lips pursed, glancing between Ilá and Thorin as the dark dwarf glowered; Balin coughed into his fist and Bofur hid a grin as he whisked several teacups out of the cupboard, while Fíli counted out cutlery, the plaited ends of his moustache twitching.

Ilá had not been raised in the wilds; she had been raised by an incredibly elegant family with manners that dated back to the beginnings of the world, but even if she hadn't, if she had spent all her life living hard and tough in the backwoods and mountain-passes of Middle Earth, she would have had better manners than to come into a person's house uninvited and start barking orders. She found bitter Thorin Oakenshield's manners callous, ungrateful, and given everything he had endured in his life, if the stories were true, she wondered how he could be so unappreciative. She knew that for someone to take her in, even for a night, meant they went without just that little they offered her, be it meat, bread or broth, and sometimes that single serving could make a huge difference to a person's life.

But Ilá never forgot the kindness of others, nor failed to repay it when she could. Gifts of fresh meat, gold coins, even the mending of tunics or gathering of fruit or ripe nuts if the season granted them. Small things, that people remembered, in appreciation of their kindness.

A cool tension filled the kitchen, Thorin glaring at Ilá as she stirred the scrambled eggs, and it was he who first broke eye-contact long before Ilá's eyes could start to water; she turned to the skillet of eggs, doling out ladlefuls of batter for more griddle-cakes, and eyed the bread baking in the oven with a little tray of blueberry turnovers.

"If anybody wishes for some, there is a little smoked salmon," she said softly, glancing up at the other dwarves, who were each doing their bit to set the kitchen-table for the meal, with the same fine earthenware they had used the previous evening.

"Dori likes smoked salmon, he'll have some with his eggs," Ori remarked, glancing up with wide eyes, and Ilá brought out the freshly-baked bread, setting it to cool on the side, replacing it with fresh dough to be baked for the others to have with their breakfast. Dusting off her hands, she removed the little griddle-cakes from the pan, set the skillet of scrambled-eggs on a woven mat in the centre of the kitchen table, with a platter of sausages and bacon, a plate of sautéed mushrooms and halved tomatoes lightly fried, the blueberry turnovers, freshly-baked bread and the pile of griddle-cakes that rose like a column in the centre of the table beside Mr Baggins' fattest teapot, and a little packet of smoked-salmon.

Perhaps more because Ilá had prepared it—and, being unused to war-scarred shield-maidens of any description (female warriors being a rarity in this age and these parts)—but the dwarves seemed uncertain, as they perched on the benches either side of the table, of helping themselves. They each glanced at each other, glanced at Ilá, wishing the others to make the first move. Even Thorin did not help himself, and Ilá, highly amused, chuckled and smirked to herself as she loaded one of Mr Baggins' larger plates for herself, taking something of everything, and a good amount of it, too.

A breakfast like this, when she was out in the wilds, was an incredible luxury; fluffy eggs, sausage, flavourful bacon, sautéed mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, fresh bread and sweet blueberry pastries with a milky cup of tea, sitting in a sun-warmed kitchen with birds singing, bees buzzing, the kettle singing, and, yes, some of the other dwarves were still snoring away…but it was peaceful; as soon as she had started to help herself, the dwarves, emboldened by Fíli offering Ilá the plate of griddle-cakes before helping himself, started picking at the offerings, loading their plates.

"Well, if this isn't a good start to our venture I don't know what is," Balin said, but his expression wavered as he watched Ilá cracked an egg into her ale before raising it to her lips. He started to stare; and then Ori glanced around, his eyebrows rising further up his brow as Fíli's jaw slowly dropped. Ilá glanced up, setting her empty flacon back on the table, met with the stunned expressions of the six dwarves.

"Is something the matter?"

"You're making us look bad," Fíli remarked, with a grin, as Óin chuckled and broke an egg into his own ale.

"It's the breakfast of champions," Ilá said, smiling softly. "Is it not, Master Óin?"

"Drink up, lads," Óin said, not having heard Ilá due to using both hands to push flacons of ale (with a raw egg apiece) toward Ori, Fíli and Bofur, his ear-horn tucked into his belt for safekeeping. "That'll put hair on your chins."

"Oi!" The three considerably younger dwarves—Ori and Fíli more than Bofur, who chuckled, grasping hold of his ale—shot insults back at Óin, as he impugned the sanctity of their beards.

Dwarves, Ilá knew, were as sensitive about their beards as hobbits were of the hair on their toes. A woman's vanity was nothing compared to the pride a dwarf took in his beard. And to say that these young dwarves needed hairs on their chins was as much a playful insult among dwarves—dwarves who were well-acquainted and friendly, mind you—as to say a young Man needed to put on a little muscle. It was all a mark of masculinity. And, bless him, Ori seemed like he was trying—in fact, he cried plaintively that he'd been trying to grow his beard for the last five years, and intended on growing it to the magnitude of Glóin's great auburn beard, "Just you wait and see, I'll have the greatest beard you've ever seen!"

"I have no doubt," Thorin chuckled, smiling at Ori indulgently as Fíli teased the youngest dwarf.

"—maybe when Glóin trims it, he'll give some of his beard to you, Ori, you could knit yourself a beard," he said thoughtfully, with a pleasant smile, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

"You could stand to set the chase-silver aside for a while, too," Bofur remarked, touching a fingertip to Fíli's cheek; his beard was beautifully trimmed along the jaw-line and around his mouth, leaving his cheeks, and his magnificent cheekbones, bare to view. Fíli, smirking, ran a hand over his cheek, smoothing his jaw and moustache, before refilling Ilá's teacup.

"When I've as many years to my name as Glóin, I shall perhaps wear my beard an inch for every year," Fíli smiled, "but until then, the ladies I keep company with prefer it when their kisses are not full of hair. I keep the beard trimmed."

"And your mother thanks you for it!" Bofur remarked, earning a laugh around the table as Fíli punched him on the arm, hard. Bofur punched him back, grinning.

"Who do you think still gives him a hot-shave?" Thorin remarked, eyes sparkling, and Fíli rose in his seat to punch Thorin on the arm, hard, making the older dwarf chuckle quite unrestrainedly; it seemed a rare occurrence, because the other dwarves raised their eyebrows and chuckled, watching Fíli try to swat at Thorin across the table as he defended himself with a rich, rare chuckle.

"Sit down and finish your breakfast, or I shall dock your pocket-allowance," Thorin said, and Fíli chuckled as he sank back into his seat.

"_You_ get pocket-money?" Bofur smirked.

"When I'm a good boy I do," Fíli grinned mischievously, his eyes sparkling as he glanced briefly at Ilá, winking.

"I have not given you or your brother pocket-money for well over five decades now," Thorin mused. "Make of that what you will."

"It's Kíli, he's a bad influence," Fíli remarked, and Thorin shot him a look that said otherwise.

"If all goes as planned and we take back Erebor, you can repay me out of your share for all those things you and Kíli have broken over the years," Thorin said, as he filled his pipe.

"Name one thing we broke!"

"My handmade tapestry of Durin's Awakening, woven by the cloistered helm-maidens in the Second Age."

"I'm sure they made it to last." Thorin eyed the blonde dwarf with an arched eyebrow, a subtle smirk of amusement playing on his lips as Fíli cleared his throat and offered a chuckling Balin the platter of bacon and sausages.

When they had eaten their fill—which took less time and more food than Ilá had anticipated—the dwarves helped set the kitchen to rights, washing the plates, separating sausage-links, helping to crack the eggs, and, despite gazing wide-eyed and fearful at her scar all through breakfast, young Ori seemed to wish to gain her approval and stood at the stove gently stirring the eggs, dodging out of the way of spitting bacon-grease as the sausages popped and the pancake-batter hissed. The table was set again, the fresh bread cooled and sliced, the tea brewed and everything else washed up, an apron strapped around Ori's waist as he stood at the sink humming, "_That's what Bilbo Baggins hates_" to himself.

"Ruby Cotton will be waiting at the _Green Dragon_ for you," Ilá said, as Balin and Bofur spoke of gathering supplies. "Food, skins full of boiled water, wine, dried meats, nosebags for the ponies, thirteen of them."

"Thirteen? One for the hobbit, or do you believe he will not join our company, and the pony is for you?" Balin asked, turning to her; Óin held his horn to his ear, gazing at her, and she carefully wiped her fingers, conscious of the rings she bore on each. She mused on Mr Baggins and his fainting fit last evening…but she remembered his Took ancestry, and the power that being called "lily-livered" had on a person (as Bofur had teasingly called Mr Baggins the night before while he had sat with his pipe and his teacup in the parlour).

"A pony would not bear me comfortably," she said softly, glancing from face to face. Though she was slender, she stood a head taller than Fíli, who was tall himself among the dwarves, and had not ridden a pony since she before had entered her teenaged years. "I have my own steed, in any case. The pony is for Mr Baggins."

"So you believe he will join us?" Fíli said, looking unconvinced. Ilá shrugged delicately.

"There is always more to a person than what immediately meets the eye," she said softly, sighing gently as she turned to the stove. "Something you should always remember in the wild… Flip those sausages, Ori, or they shall burn."

"Oh," Ori grimaced, quickly flinging the sausages around the frying-pan. "Dori doesn't let me in the kitchen, he says I can't cook anything fit even for troll-consumption, let alone dwarf."

"Come along with us to get the ponies," Fíli said. "We'll get Kíli up, he can take over washing-up." And, striding into parlour, there was the sound of someone being kicked, a grunt, a curse aimed at Fíli, and his dark-haired brother came shuffling into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and grimacing, wearing his trews and under-tunic.

"Well, what a vision you are this morning," Thorin said drily, eyeing the young dwarf as Ori pressed an apron on him and darted after Bofur. "If the woman had not already seen your table-manners last evening she might now be put off by the sight of you." Kíli peeked blearily at Thorin, who drew himself up from the kitchen bench and tucked his sword around his waist, casting Ilá the briefest of glances before following Óin and Balin, as Bofur set about waking the rest of the rabble. Ilá frowned after him, somewhat resenting being called "the woman".

"Morning," Kíli yawned, stretching. He sniffed the air, eyes at half-mast. "Bacon?"

"Sit yourself down," Ilá said, and soon Kíli was joined at the table by Dori, Nori, Dwalin, Bifur and Óin. "You'll finish eating and we'll be on our way…" It didn't take long for the dwarves at the second-seating to finish their breakfasts; nearly every morsel was tucked away in their bellies (or their beards) and Kíli, as the youngest in attendance, had to do the washing-up (Ilá having cooked). The dwarves clothed themselves fully, kitted out with furs and makeshift armour, leather and maille-reinforced tunics darned with suede; battle-hammers were picked up from the hall and throwing-axes tucked into boots, pocket-knives stowed away in the inside-pockets of belted jackets; the last of the plates was dried and stacked in the cupboard with teacups, polished flacons and cutlery (counted twice by Dori, after Nori hung up the dishcloth to dry before the stove).

Everything was left as if no dwarves had formed an unexpected party in Mr Baggins' home last-night; except for the pantry, which was now sorrowfully empty. A packet of bacon, several eggs, three sausages and a handful of mushrooms were all that remained, all Ilá had set aside for Bilbo, who still had not awoken by the time Balin returned, leaving the Burglar's unsigned contract in the parlour by Bilbo's favourite armchair.

Ori was stationed on the bridge across The Water to the _Green Dragon_ inn, to keep watch on Bag End for any sighting of Mr Baggins. The other dwarves, each kitting out their new ponies with full bridle, carried bed-rolls, extra weapons, in Dori's case a skillet, and took their share of some of the provisions.

In the Four Farthings of the Shire, dwarves were sometime seen wandering toward the Blue Mountains and Ered Luin, but a confluence of them, and all of them with such _character_, made for some very entertaining viewing for the young hobbit-girls and hobbit-boys who giggled and played kiss-chase on the green before the _Green_ _Dragon_, where ducks quacked happily, trout poked their lips to the surface of the water and little ships made of dried leaves and twigs floated momentarily before tragically sinking. Dwalin became the object of fascination and fear; a few of the braver hobbit-boys snuck closer to read the runes tattooed on his head; and they found Balin's and Glóin's foot-long beards incredibly curious.

Kíli and Fíli were incorrigible; chasing after the little hobbit-children, making games up on the green, teasing them and threatening to toss one in the water had the children giggling and shrieking giddily, Kíli had them all thinking up names for the ponies, and Fíli brought from out of a pocket spinning-tops and an interlocking wooden puzzle that even the wisest chequers-master could not piece back together once Fíli had 'broken' it.

"Each piece has to be put together in precisely the correct order, or it shan't fit together," Fíli said, and his long, clever fingers nimbly held polished wooden pieces together, the last interlocking to create a many-pointed star. "Clever, isn't it."

"Where did you get it from?"

"I made it," Fíli said, smiling gently, at the little hobbit-children's awed faces as the polished star was passed around. Across the green, Fíli shook his head and watched Kíli playing with a skipping-rope, held either end by two little hobbit-girls in pretty sunflower-yellow frocks and beautifully woven poke-bonnets, ringlets bouncing around their shoulders; he tripped on the rope and fell flat on his back, to the delight of the children gathered. He limped over and yawned, and as the ponies were saddled and fitted out, Mrs Cotton appeared to laden them all with food-supplies.

Sealed pots of flour; earthenware jars of whipped honey, pats of fresh butter and packets of dried meats; dried fruits; skins of wine and water; three sacks of potatoes; links of sausages; blocks of cheese; and some of Mrs Cotton's famous fruitcakes garnished with almonds, the recipe for which she kept a fiercely-guarded secret.

"Do you think he'll show up?"

"Bilbo?" Bofur shot back at Ori, who was still gazing across the bridge toward Bag End, and the great 'party tree' overshadowing the meadow dotted with gorgeously overflowing allotments.

"I don't reckon we'll be seeing him again," Nori spoke up, as Dori frowned at him and handed something to Mrs Cotton.

"He may surprise you yet," Ilá said softly, sitting on a picnic-bench outside the _Green Dragon_, where hobbits were already puffing away on pipes, playing chequers and watching the market (Bofur was "feeling bad about that B-A-C-O-N I had for breakfast" as he petted the little piglets being sold off) and keeping an eye on the boisterous hobbit-children playing on the green.

"Care to make a friendly wager?" Kíli asked, glancing at Ilá as she delicately cut chunks from a fresh apple with a small knife, each piece deliciously crunchy and sweet. Ilá gazed at him, then smiled.

"Perhaps."

"If our Burglar _does_ join our company…I shall give you ten gold crowns," Kíli said.

"I see. And if he does not?"

"If Baggins doesn't show up, I shall have a kiss," Kíli said, and Ilá raised her eyebrows. She chuckled to herself, noting the look on Fíli's face, disapproving and a little disheartened, perhaps; and the other dwarves each chuckled and poked fun at Kíli for his boldness.

"I shall take your wager, Master Kíli," Ilá said softly, with a smile. He had not specified from whom the kiss was to be from if she lost the wager! They shook hands, and Ilá chuckled to herself as she readied her own parcels and belongings. She was used to wandering long in the wilds, laden with supplies as well as weapons and clothing, so it wasn't a bother for her to put an extra pack over her back; but her horse was not technically _her_ horse. She allowed Ilá to ride her only, but she was a wild, beautiful mare from Edoras, one of the _Mearas_. The colour of hithlain, Ilá called her Elhith, 'star-mist', and, much like Gandalf, she appeared when she was most needed, even if Ilá did not know it at the time.

At the border of The Shire, Ilá had let Elhith wander off, for the Four Farthings made a beautiful walk, and Elhith had become antsy. She preferred the wilds, and Ilá would only have had to stable her once she reached Bag End, anyway.

So Ilá would go on foot, as she sometimes preferred; nearly a week's hard riding had made her a little saddle-sore, and her injured leg would only become aggravated by inaction if she rode too long.

Three extra ponies were brought into the party, to bear supplies, making the caravan sixteen in number, each of the ponies lovely, hardy Shetlands, ranging from piebald to blue dun, a wheat-coloured silver dapple and a beautiful chestnut-coloured bay among them. With traditional hobbit-names (jewels and flowers for the mares, curious names for the stallions like 'Bungo' and 'Caradoc'), each dwarf claimed his own, Thorin taking the grandest, the red bay with black mane, named Eglantine, and for half an hour Ilá laughed silently, watching Ori first try to climb onto Buttercup, slip off the stirrup, fall _over_ the saddle in his enthusiasm once he'd managed to swing a leg over, and eventually, start moving backward because he wasn't accustomed to horse-riding and was giving patient Buttercup the wrong instructions.

"Come here," Ilá said softly, as Ori gave her a beseeching look, and she took hold of the reins he had dropped in his nervousness, and, the others having already started off in a procession, she led Buttercup after Fíli and Kíli, who rode astride Pearl and Bluebell respectively, and led between them Snowdrop, bearing some of the supplies. Ori was not at home on horseback at all; and, being rather tall beside the lovely Shetland, a young dwarf sitting astride it, Ilá couldn't stop smiling to herself, even chuckling softly once, to remember teaching young boys how to ride without fear. Ori had a little way to go yet. He sat upright, holding the reins with white knuckles, gazing around with wide eyes and glancing every other second down at Buttercup's head as she whickered and tossed her mane, trotting a little faster to catch up with aptly-named Snowdrop.

"Ilá!"

"It's alright, she just doesn't want to be left behind," Ilá said softly, striding alongside Buttercup as she strained to pick up speed and trot alongside Snowdrop. "Let loose the reins a little, see how she's straining… There we go."

"Have you never ridden a horse before, Ori?" Fíli asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"Dori says they're dangerous," Ori mumbled, glancing down warily at Buttercup as she whickered again.

"Oh, he doesn't mean anything by it," Ilá said softly to the pony, clicking her tongue and stroking Buttercup's mane with the back of her fingers. She glanced at Ori. "Shetlands are notoriously lovely. And hardy; they can survive the bitterness of winters in the highlands, and carry twice their weight if they must."

"Sound a bit like dwarves," Fíli said thoughtfully.

"Except for the 'notoriously lovely' part," Kíli said, clearing his throat softly, making his brother chuckle. Up ahead, several of the older dwarves were laughing deeply, to the grim-faced consternation of Dwalin.

While Balin had claimed a male pony named Rollo, and Óin a young mare named Clover, Bifur rode astride Caradoc, and Nori was getting along very well with Bertie.

They were all—Fíli translated, for Ilá was versed in the dwarvish language only as far as reading _Cirth_, their runes, having had little remarkable association with dwarves before joining this company—"taking the piss about Dwalin's pony."

"Why, what's wrong with it?" Ori asked innocently. Fíli and Kíli shared a smirk.

"She's called _Daisy_," Fíli chuckled, and Ilá, gazing up the procession to Dwalin, saw the battle-hardened, scarred and tattooed warrior grinding his teeth as Balin, Óin and Glóin jeered and chuckled.

It was very sweet, as they ambled on through Hobbiton, to hear dangerous Dwalin click his tongue and grunt, "Gee up there, Daisy." And each of the dwarves made sure Dwalin knew it. (By the time they parted with the ponies, months later, Daisy would be renamed Nipper, after her propensity to give all who insulted Dwalin a soft bite).

Bungo, Myrtle and Opal ambling along up front with supplies, led by Bofur (cooing adoringly to his pony, Daffodil) and Glóin on Lily, the procession was led by Gandalf in front on a chestnut stallion he had undoubtedly ridden into The Shire on, with Thorin behind him on Eglantine; Ilá strode alongside Ori, keeping watch from the rear on either side. Her experience in the wilds meant there were very few times when she was caught unawares; she was always watchful. Had to be, to stay alive.

So she was aware of someone following them before their party heard the call of one Mr Bilbo Baggins, Burlgar, for she had seen him flapping along behind with his bare feet, unbuttoned jacket and his contract fluttering in the breeze as he pelted along faster than any respectable hobbit had ever run (for anything other than free Longbottom leaf, of course).

"_Wait_. WAIT!" The hobbit came flapping into view, out of breath but smiling proudly; the caravan of ponies halted, except for Buttercup, who trotted along until she was stood beside Snowdrop, and stopped so suddenly poor Ori was nearly thrown over her neck, and would have been, if Ilá hadn't grabbed the back of his cardigan. Pearl, Fíli's pony, whickered and tramped in protest at the halt of the procession, and he clicked his tongue softly, patting her neck; Ilá glanced from the pony to Fíli.

Her grandfather used to say a man's worth could be measured by the way he treated his inferiors, not his equals; and certainly by the lore of the Rohirrim of Edoras, the way a man treated his horse was taken very seriously. Fíli was gentle with Pearl, stroking her mane, and she settled, though she snorted impatiently. In contrast, Kíli's pony, Bluebell, took the opportunity to bend her neck and start nibbling on the sweet grass to the side of the pony-trodden path.

"I signed it!" Bilbo declared, smiling as he trotted along the stalled procession to Balin, who arched an eyebrow, retrieved a dwarvish _loupe _(used for examining the purity of precious stones and, in Balin's case, to enlarge small lettering for easier viewing) from the inside of his jacket and examined Mr Baggins' signature.

"Everything appears to be in order!" Balin declared, folding the contract, handing it back to Bilbo. "Welcome, Master Baggins, to the company of Thorin Oakenshield." The others chuckled and cheered—especially those who had taken wagers on Bilbo showing up.

"Give him a pony," Thorin growled, and Ilá, as she led one of the supply-ponies back around behind Fíli, the better not to hold everyone up as Gandalf and Thorin clicked their tongues at their mounts, saw Bilbo's head snap up as he stammered.

"Oh, n-no, no, that won't be necessary, thank you," he said nervously. Fíli and Kíli exchanged a grin and urged their ponies on, reaching down for Bilbo. "I've done my fair share of walking-holidays, you know—argh!" The hobbit's legs dangled in midair for a moment before Fíli and Kíli set him uncomfortably in the saddle of Myrtle, who plodded along with a great cooking-pot and a considerable amount of provisions strapped to her besides the little hobbit, who sat grimacing, back straight, holding his fists clenched before his chest, the reins dangling uselessly.

"Ilá, my dear, where is your horse?" Gandalf asked, having dropped back to confer with Bilbo as coin-purses were tossed about, the grumblings and delight of the dwarves who had lost and won wagers centred on Mr Baggins. She herself counted out the ten gold crowns Kíli had promised her; she strode alongside the caravan, quite at her leisure, enjoying the springy grass beneath her feet, fiddling with wildflowers she plucked from the tall grasses.

"She'll be along," Ilá said softly. She glanced at Gandalf. "Anyway, I do not mind the walk; it's better for my leg not to stay idle, and The Shire makes for some beautiful walks." She sighed and glanced at Gandalf again. "We take the East Road, I presume."

"Indeed," Gandalf nodded. "Hopefully nothing will run us off the road; I do not wish to navigate us all through the Old Forest. Nor over the Barrow Downs." Ilá frowned ahead, her stomach knotting subtly; centuries ago the area now known in hobbit-lore as the Barrow Downs had once been home-in-hiding for some of her people. All had perished, now the only evidence that once the Dúnedain had dwelt there their funeral mounds, haunted by wights sent by the Witch-King of Angmar.

Though she disliked the thought of crossing the Barrow Downs, something about what Gandalf had said niggled at her and Ilá frowned; they had more to worry about after Bree than they did before they could reach the crossroads town.

"_Our supplies will suit our needs for a few weeks, if we provision wisely_," Ilá said thoughtfully, speaking in the elven tongue, "_but a short rest in Bree would be prudent, to rest the ponies and see to any slipped shoes_."

"_A soft bed and a hot bath would be welcome to all in a few days' time, I believe_," Gandalf agreed. "_Especially when the weather starts to turn_."

"_Came you past Amon Sûl_?" Ilá asked, frowning as she glanced at Gandalf.

"_No, indeed, by the North Road, directly over the Sarn Ford_," Gandalf said softly. "_Why do you ask_?"

"_You journeyed by the same path as I then, perhaps, though I took the Andrath Greenway road, but I heard rumours, Mithrandir, in Bree_," Ilá said uneasily, glancing at the wizard. "_That is why I was delayed in my arrival last evening. Four days past I doubled back to the watchtower in daylight_."

"_And what did you find_?" Gandalf asked sharply, his bushy eyebrows twitching beneath his wide-brimmed hat. Ilá licked her lips, glancing quickly at the dwarves nearby—Fíli, Kíli, Ori—whose conversation had filtered off to silence, each gazing at either her or the wizard as they spoke the beautiful elven language. She sighed and glanced back at Gandalf.

"_Bones, Mithrandir. It would not be at all surprising, travellers are sometimes waylaid there by trolls who dare come down from the Weather Hills…but these were orc bones, I have seen enough of them to recognise them—each dented and nicked_," Ilá said, striding alongside the wizard as his mount clip-clopped gently.

"_As if something had gnawed on them_," Gandalf murmured, his expression becoming faraway and uneasy.

"_Yes_," she confirmed softly. "_Gundabad Wargs_."

"_You are sure_?"

"_The size of the fangs, they had to have been_," Ilá said confidently.

"_How fresh were the remains_?"

"_There was meat left on some of them_," she answered. "_From the night before, I thought. Remnants of clothing, a blade. Goblin-made, but the garments were of the kind an orc would fashion if he had no fresh victims to scavenge from_."

"_It is unusual, very few orcs have dared cross the Bruinen for an age_," Gandalf frowned deeply.

"_And they are using Amon Sûl_," Ilá added, with an angry scoff, scowling. "_The perfect location for observation and defence… Who knows how many they have already waylaid…_"

"_But what are they doing, so far West_?" Gandalf frowned.

"_If they came from the Misty Mountains I can have only one guess_," Ilá said, sharing a darkly significant look with the wizard as they heard Thorin calling to Balin in dwarvish. "_If word has reached them through their spies, they may yet know the exiled King is abroad. Mithrandir, our journey will be safe until we have passed Bree, then we must journey into the wilds, either through the South Downs or over the Weather Hills. We cannot risk exposure on the Great Road, not if my suspicions are correct. We would be wandering directly into their net_."

"_Agreed_," Gandalf said heavily. "_They will most likely be heavily armed, as is their fashion. And these ponies, as wonderful as they are in the bearing of heavy burdens, stand no chance of outrunning the Wargs of Mount Gundabad_."

"_I have sent Orós to watch over Weathertop_," Ilá said softly. "_To take stock of any activity_."

"_And who is Orós, might I ask_?" Gandalf asked. Ilá smiled.

"_It is not only the enemy who employ spies_," she said softly, and that was all she would speak on the matter, though Gandalf chuckled as if he already anticipated Ilá's spy would not be of the conventional type.

Their pace was comfortable, ambling, though they made it only twenty-five miles before the darkness began to creep in through the trees. Though Ilá would have them keep on, the dwarves were saddle-sore, and more than a few had been grumbling about supper. So the ponies were led off the road, into the shelter of the trees, and firewood was gathered from the woodland floor. Dori's skillet was put to use, several links of sausages popping and sizzling on the pan while, having passed by the edge of a crop of corn, the cobs, still in the stringy leaves that protected the sweet yellow treasure within, were arranged on the smouldering ash to cook, a dab of butter slipped in each one. Fresh water from a nearby stream was drunk, the sweet-corn shared around with the crispy sausages, and as the fire simmered lower the dwarves brought out their musical instruments—Dori, Nori and Ori each brought out flutes, Bifur and Bofur clarinets, Dwalin a drum, and Fíli and Kíli two beautifully crafted fiddles. Thorin revealed a golden harp from the inside of his jacket, and as soon as the silver strings were plucked, the other dwarves joined; they sang into the night, long after the shadows had disappeared and the deep navy sky glittered with stars, and only Ori nodding off as he listened to the solemn vespers of the older dwarves hinted that it was time the others put out their pipes and unfurled their bed-rolls.

Bifur took the first watch; he sat with his pipe, humming to himself long after the other dwarves' snores filled the air, quite contented to sit and smoke and keep an eye on things. Ilá, her head full of the dwarves' sorrowful songs, tucked herself up under her fur-lined cloak, her bed-roll (with a quilted segment sewn at the top stuffed with swansdown for a pillow) unfurled at the base of a large oak overgrown with honeysuckle and ivy, outside the circle of the firelight. While they kept a watch, Ilá had found it wise in times past to sleep a little away from a large gathering, for if anything beset the group, she had a little more time to react if someone cried out.

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**A.N.**: I love the idea of Dwalin's pony being called Daisy. I think he's kind of the equivalent of Dagonet in _King Arthur_ (2004 version), in sheer formidableness. *Dagonet and Tristram are my favourite characters from that film; Tristram inspired both Ilá and one of my other OC characters, and Dagonet's personality will influence the way I write Fíli's character development.


	5. A Coin-Purse, Cherry-Stones & Pinecones

**A.N.**: Thank you to everyone for your wonderful reviews, I really appreciate it after the effort I put into each chapter. Also, I think because of the detail I put in, people might have misread the detail about the wager on Bilbo; it's _Kíli _who bets Ilá a kiss, and _Fíli_ who doesn't appreciate it! I'm intending to have Kíli be an incorrigible flirt, while Fíli is the kind of man who develops a very subtle but deep and strong love…

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**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_05_

A Coin-Purse, Cherry-Stones and Pinecones

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The birds woke Ilá long before the sun had risen; as such, she relieved Óin from the last watch and had the fire rebuilt and crackling, a pot of water simmering over it, and when Dori roused from slumber, they both used the hot water to wash themselves as best they could without stripping down.

"It is nice to find oneself amongst like-minded company," Dori said, as he brushed his teeth carefully; Ilá smiled subtly and rinsed out her faded crimson flannel, having already brushed her own teeth. "I suppose you keep your hair bound rather than cut it all off."

"I did once cut it short to my chin, as is the way of the men of my people," Ilá said softly; the others were still asleep, Óin now grunting and snoring. "In Harad I saw the women bound their hair, they make a fashion of it; I adopted the custom for my own purposes."

"I wish Ori would allow me to give him a decent haircut," Dori sighed, shaking his head as he glanced toward the young dwarf, his youngest-brother.

"You journeyed to The Shire to bring Ori home, did you not?" Ilá asked.

"Indeed, he got it into his head great adventures were always best _experienced_ rather than read about in his books," Dori sighed. "He is determined to walk into danger."

"I noticed he carries no weapon," Ilá said softly.

"Careful, he'll hear you. He's mighty proud of that slingshot," Dori said, putting his toiletry kit back into his jacket-pocket. Ilá smiled softly to herself and laid her flannel on a branch to dry.

"I will go on ahead and examine our route," she said to Dori. "If the crop of corn is anything to indicate, there is a farmstead not far off; we can replenish some of our supply."

"Very well, milady," Dori half-bowed, and Ilá packed her things away, tucked her pack across her back with her bed-roll, and made her way back to the road.

She was not, Ilá knew, part of the company yet. She had signed her contract, yes, and Balin had examined it for authenticity, but she was not a woman among comrades the way the dwarves were; they were either related by blood or a fierce bond of friendship and loyalty. Balin and Dwalin were brothers; Dori, Nori and Ori too. As were Fíli and Kíli. Bifur and Bofur were cousins. All related to each other, every one of them was loyal to Thorin, their king in exile, and their shared history, their shared sorrow, had forged that bond. She had heard it in their songs last evening, and though she had sorrows of her own, they were hers.

Pausing at the top of a gentle slope, she nimbly climbed a tree to scout the area; a patchwork of greens and yellows created the landscape, crops of rapeseed, corn, peas with their little red flowers, tomatoes, every lovely summer vegetable, and orchards groaning with peaches, pears, apricots, plums and, Ilá's favourite, _cherries_.

Ilá would part with her gold more readily for fresh fruits and vegetables than she ever would for a rich gown, but that came from her living so long in the wild. Thinking on the agrarian hobbit culture, she knew they had their priorities in the right order, for full bellies always made for pleasanter folk, whether they were Man, dwarf or elf, even Orc. Hunger, more than anything in the world, drove peoples' actions. And it moved her to seek out the owner of the farmstead little more than a mile north-west of her lofty perch. First, though, she returned to the camp, saddled Pearl, and brought along Snowdrop with her.

An agrarian society would always consist of early-risers, and it was never truer than on a large farm; hens clucked away and pigs snorted, she heard cows mooing in a field overflowing with clover, ponies whinnying, and as she approached the farmhouse she glimpsed the open door. Less than half her height the door, when she had knocked gently and waited in the yard, with fluffy-legged Bantam chickens clucking around her ankles (she was rather taken with a little blonde one) the farmer's wife appeared, wiping her hands on an embroidered hand-towel and peering up with a good-natured face surrounded by dark curls.

Having complimented the hobbit-wife on the embroidery on her apron, Ilá made her way back to the dwarves' camp with Snowdrop loaded up with a large wicker picnic-basket stuffed with foot-long runner-beans, peas, cucumbers, white asparagus, courgettes, aubergines, two large handfuls of mushrooms, bulbs of garlic and onions, and a wicker trug full of beautiful tomatoes, sweet plums, peaches, pears and cherries from the orchards. She also came away with a pail of fresh milk (to be returned when they passed the farm later on).

Politeness, kindness, went further than gold, especially in these parts where people were naturally good-natured and generous, but even Ilá having stopped for five minutes to help Mrs Maggot reach the highest shelves of her large pantry for the jars she needed to sterilise for her jams and cordials, and plucking a lost kitten out of the topmost branches of an apple-tree, had earned Ilá the approval of the farmer's wife, and she had come away with two soft handkerchiefs embroidered by Mrs Maggot herself, and a bundle of beautiful red sticks of rhubarb.

Pearl, a rather imperious pony, deigned to let Ilá ride her, with Snowdrop plodding along at her own pace behind them, but Ilá having noticed bushes laden with berries on her walk to the farm, she stopped, drew two of her long, fine lengths of fabric from her pack (which she usually used either as a shawl, a sling or to wrap her long hair in a turban) and went berry-picking; beautiful strawberries, sweet, tart raspberries, blackcurrants and even some gooseberries. She knotted the bundles carefully, adding them to Snowdrop's bundle, and continued on.

As she neared the camping-site of the dwarves, Ilá could hear voices; several of the dwarves already awake were deep in discussion, by the sound of it convincing Ori of something, and she heard her name, or the name most in these parts knew her by, and crept up toward the small knot of dwarves.

"…she's a _Ranger_."

"Dangerous Men, the Dúnedain. Wander in the wild, all alone. No home, no family…" Fíli said softly.

"No mercy," Kíli murmured darkly.

"They say most of 'em go mad from the loneliness. Addled," Bofur nodded seriously. "Armed to the teeth, too."

"And quick to use their weapons."

"Best keep your wits about you… She carves her name into the brow of her victims…so any who stumble upon the dead know who cut them down," said Fíli sombrely.

"I heard she creeps into your home, lies silent beneath your bed until the wee hours, and when you're fast asleep…she'll creep out, and attack, swift and quick as a shadow," Bofur said seriously.

"She never leaves any survivors," said Kíli, who was gazing earnestly at Ori.

"No survivors?" Ilá said thoughtfully, and she laughed richly as each and every one of the dwarves jumped a foot. "Then where do the stories come from, I wonder?"

"Ilá!" Kíli blurted, wide-eyed. "Have you been…? Where did you…?"

"How did you do that?" Fíli asked softly. He was down to his tunic and trousers, his face washed, hair combed and plaited neatly from his temples, and with the sun dappling through the trees, he looked very fair and handsome. In contrast, Ori, in his heavy knitted cardigan, gazed fearfully at her from his perch on the grass.

"Your wits need sharpening, sirs," she said softly. "A troll could sneak up on you and have the beards from your chins before you would notice."

"Where have you been?" Kíli asked, frowning bemusedly.

"There is a farmstead not a mile from here," she answered. "I have fresh vegetables to last us a few days, and a pail of milk. If you wish for breakfast I suggest you find the oats among the supplies."

Dori, it seemed, had taken the opportunity, while he stood watch and Ilá had sought out fresh provisions for breakfast, to do some washing; a length of thick string had been hung between two oaks and from them, held by hand-carved wooden pegs, dangled long-johns, tunics, handkerchiefs and socks. Already warm for the hour, the August sun was quickly drying the laundry, and Dori quickly returned from the stream where he had rinsed out the large cauldron (in which he had scrubbed the clothing with a small bar of soap and a coarse brush to remove ground-in dirt). The cauldron was replaced back over the fire, the milk was added to it with several handfuls of porridge-oats; Dori had it simmering away beautifully by the time the other dwarves roused, and the carved wooden bowls were handed around with wood-handled spoons.

To have heard the dwarves murmuring about her exploits in the wild was at once gratifying and disheartening. That they knew of some of her experience in the wild, and her trademark—indeed, she did mark her victims (the Orcs and goblins; never Men) with her name carved into their brow. Three letters – _ILÁ_—were easy to carve into flesh, and Orcs and goblins everywhere feared whispers of a pale woman with bound hair near their territory. But if the dwarves feared or distrusted her, gaining their cooperation would be akin to pulling teeth. And with her knowledge of the roads ahead, they needed to cooperate with her, even if they didn't yet know it, and would later deny they needed her guidance.

Using Dori's small skillet, Ilá prepared two sticks of rhubarb, chopping it into inch-long segments, added water to the pan and gently poached the rhubarb over the fire, until the beautiful fragrance permeated the air; she tipped away the water, chopped a couple of strawberries and some carefully-stoned cherries to the skillet to soften them, and when the other dwarves were roused, she added some of the poached fruit to her porridge, giving the rest of it to whoever asked for it; some of the dwarves had their porridge with a drizzle of honey, while the leftover sausages from last evening were shared out.

The fresh milk was drunk, alone or with some tea Dori brewed once the cauldron had been emptied among the dwarves and rinsed in the stream with the bowls and spoons, and it was not long before the caravan of ponies was once again on the road, the well-trodden earth dappled by sunlight through the leafy tree-canopy. Ilá turned off the road once, to return the milk-pail, and rejoined the party taking a shortcut through Mr Maggot's broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts field, bearing three loaves of plaited potato-bread fresh from Mrs Maggot's oven and a small bottle of whisky (which she kept secret).

Ilá was such a brisk walker when alone that, combined with Mr Maggot's shortcut, it was over half an hour before the procession of dwarves, led by Gandalf with Bilbo beside Ori near the back, was sighted along the earthen road winding idly through the woods. Upon seeing the small barrel of Old Toby she carried propped upon her shoulder, the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf all perked up and applauded, chuckling.

"Mr Baggins," she said, after securing the barrel of pipe-weed to Bungo's pack, the fresh bread stored carefully inside the great cauldron borne by Opal, and she took from her pocket one of the two handkerchiefs Mrs Maggot had given her. One was embroidered beautifully with a pattern of cornflowers and ears of wheat, the other, chestnuts, mushrooms and red squirrels, and it was the latter she handed to Bilbo. "Mind you don't lose it. You won't find intricacy like that in the towns of Men once we pass Bree."

Looking very surprised, Bilbo took the handkerchief, examining the neat hems, the embroidered squirrels. "Thank you!" Ilá nodded, and strode on, gently patting Opal as she wandered past the laden pony. There were twenty-five, thirty miles to the Brandywine Bridge; if they were smart and didn't tarry, their party could reach it before the end of the day.

The ponies kept a slow, ambling pace; if Thorin was in a hurry to reclaim his homeland, the ponies and the rest of the company certainly had no qualms in taking their time to get to Erebor. With the barrel of pipe-weed safely tucked atop Bungo, the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf took their pleasure in lighting their pipes as they wandered. The hobbits of The Shire having developed the art of smoking pipe-weed, Bilbo had grown up surrounded by smoking-culture and after the dwarves started to sing merrier songs than they had last evening, Bilbo was encouraged to tell the history of smoking, some of the songs written about Tobold Hornblower, the first cultivator of Southfarthing pipe-weed. Gandalf chuckled and hummed along as Bilbo sang a few hobbit-songs associated with the art of smoking.

The scenery started to change, great hills coming closer, trees thicker and older, the landscape wilder, less cultivated, more beautiful. Cloaks were thrown off, buckles undone and tunics unlaced for a flutter of breeze to cool the skin as the sun grew higher and hotter, and on foot Ilá could wander off when and where she wished, especially when the terrain proved difficult to navigate for the ponies. As such she could stride on ahead, taking shortcuts through the woods and jump little ravines, splashing across rivers up to her thighs (she removed her boots and walked barefoot through long grasses, where she was quiet and gentle enough that she could see families of golden doe with their ink-eyed fawns nibbling at wildflowers she plucked and wove together for a fragrant wreath to decorate her bound hair, and nibbled as she walked on fresh berries plucked from bushes, wild plums and sweet apples tucked into the woods where no hobbit or Man ventured, the trees left to their own devices and thriving. She picked herbs and searched especially for _athelas_.

She sighed softly to herself, licking her fingers of juice from fresh strawberries she had plucked from a hidden thicket of berry-bushes, and eyed an ancient oak she had long been fond of. An incredibly thick branch, wider than a dwarf and flat as her blade, stuck out twice the height of a dwarf from the ground, right over the faintly-trodden path the ponies would undoubtedly take whenever they caught up; Ilá had taken several things off Opal and Snowdrop and continued on foot through terrain the ponies could not manage, and she had covered many miles.

Ilá had many times used the branch as a perch to sleep on, for it was flat and wide and high enough that none but a very tall Man indeed could reach her (unless with a bow and arrow). An idea regarding the branch amused her, and Ilá continued on for ten minutes before coming off the path, to a natural copse guarded by horse-chestnuts and coarse purple-flowered bushes, often-used by Ilá herself in times past to shelter when the evening came swiftly.

They had not yet reached the Old Forest, nor the Brandywine Bridge, but as the country itself grew wilder, so did its occupants, and it was not advisable to stray far from the path. In this little copse she built a small fire and set atop it the cooking cauldron. She murmured softly the elven songs she had learned as a girl, low sweet melodies full of yearning and hope; she sat cross-legged on the grass, using her knife to peel the spears of white asparagus. She used the polished inside of her shield as a board and chopped the tips off, then cut the stems finely, the better to let it soften and dissolve after she sweated down a finely-chopped onion and clove of garlic in a dab of butter; the asparagus was added, softening, and she added salt and pepper and chopped fresh herbs to give the plain water she added from her water-skin more flavour, unfurled her bed-roll, and while the pot came to the boil and simmered, she had a short nap in the warm sun.

If she could not have her heart's desire, this was the next-best thing she could wish for. To nap idly beneath the sun-dappled trees as a rich soup of beautiful fresh vegetables simmered, the air warm and dry with a gentle breeze that tickled her bare toes…

Twenty minutes later she took the pot off the fire, and using the flat of a ladle she mashed the asparagus until it formed a past, disintegrating into the thickening stock, becoming creamy in colour and texture. She let the soup rest, and dozed a little longer; it would take the dwarves an hour or more to reach her, and by the time she roused herself and yawned, stretching luxuriously, she had just time to set the soup on the fire again, adding flour to thicken it further, and doubled back, barefoot and unarmed but for her bow and a knife, through the trees.

Her sense of humour had long caused her men to become wary; it was not unheard of for her to remain stock still in the midnight hour, only to tickle the watch from up a tree, or jump out at the boys when they had believed her to have lost hide-and-seek; practical-jokes had been her saving grace when the darkness of the world would have long broken her, and it had not been uncommon in years past to find her men roaring with laughter in their battle-camps, over some joke she had pulled on one of them. Humour kept men going when they had little else. And though she joked about sometimes, lightening a dark situation to get them all through it, Ilá's men knew there was not a fiercer warrior or defender of the Free Peoples, and on the battlefield it was only under her colours they could ever wish to fight, for she was a very great captain. She came from a very long line of them. After her first victory it had mattered not that she was a woman. In a company of two hundred, they had lost only one man that day. Her men called most of Ilá's strategies 'minimal loss'; she taught her men to use their brains before their swords. Long had she been a lover of _chess_.

It was Kíli who first fell victim to her sense of humour. When Gandalf, Thorin and most of the older dwarves had passed beneath the great branch, she crept up the tree, amused that none of the young dwarves at the rear were paying attention—she lay flat on her stomach, and as Kíli passed beneath the great branch, she used the tiny but useful hook on the top-end of her carved bow to snare the drawstrings of his coin-purse, tucked at his belt. He was chatting to Balin up ahead and did not notice; nor did Ori or Fíli notice her rise on the branch as they passed beneath her, until she had dropped with barely a rustle of fabric on her toes, a knife pressed to Fíli's throat.

"Dead," she said, arching an eyebrow reprovingly as Fíli gulped. When he recognised the timbre of her voice, his posture relaxed entirely, and he gave her a subtle frown, though his eyes glowed softly with amusement.

Ori, who had noticed only that Fíli had fallen behind, glanced around and squawked. "_Fíli_! Someone's got a knife to his—!"

"_Ilá_," Kíli growled, whipping around in his saddle, and Bilbo's jaw dropped as the others halted their ponies, glancing over their shoulders.

"I should perhaps relocate the babies to the _middle_ of the procession," she said, tucking her lethal, curved elven hunting-knife into its sheath at her waist with a decisive _schnick_. "They have not a wary eye between them."

"I wish you would stop doing that!" Kíli declared heatedly.

"What did you want to put a knife to Fíli's throat for?" Ori asked innocently, gazing at her as if she had personally wounded him, and there was a flicker of something like fear or wonder across his young face as Dori called him up sharply to join him and Balin in the centre of the procession.

"If they congregate in small numbers, enemies will often pluck the last member of such a party," she said softly. "None in front notice anything…until it is too late."

"Dwalin, Bofur, take the rear," Thorin ordered harshly.

"If you insist on testing our vigilance in so creative a way," Fíli said quietly, leaning down slightly from Pearl's saddle, "we shall be long-dead of fright ere we ever reach Erebor." Ilá smiled softly, reaching out to pat Pearl's neck and gently take hold of her reins; Fíli surprisingly let them loose, and allowed her to guide Pearl as she grew antsy at Bofur and Dwalin clip-clopping back behind Fíli.

"What was that we said about keeping our wits about us, just this morning?" Bofur asked Fíli, giving Ilá an easy grin.

"Apparently the message did no' sink in," Dwalin growled. "Ye let a lady take ye by surprise!"

"It's as my father always used to say," Bofur said genially, his arms crossed over his chest, hugging his heavy pick-axe, Daffodil's reins in his lap as she plodded along happily, "the sharpest blades are often concealed in the softest sheaths." Dwalin laughed coarsely, chuckling along, and Ilá was surprised, as she smiled to herself, to see Fíli blush slightly, glancing back at Bofur before he caught her eye and looked straight ahead, flushing a little deeper red.

"What does he mean?" half-whispered Ori, who was frowning bemusedly.

"Pay him no mind, Ori," Fíli said softly, not looking at Ilá but blushing softly again. "You're too young yet for that kind of alehouse-talk."

Dwalin only laughed harder at Ori's relative naïveté, but having been around soldiers for more than half her life, Ilá had not blushed properly for many a year; the wisdom of Bofur's father was a phrase Ilá had heard long ago and had come to truly define when she had started to emerge as the warrior-woman she was now.

"Come," she said softly, "let's go up ahead. Ori, follow us." She clicked her tongue at Buttercup, who turned her nose to them as she led Pearl toward the trees. "Gentlemen, if you desire luncheon, you might wish to follow."

"I'm sorry if Bofur insulted you," Fíli said softly, glancing at her as he once more took Pearl's reins, but Ilá just smiled reminiscently. Many times she remembered lewd jokes because of the men who had told them. Grim in face and dress the men of the Dúnedain were, but Ilá's sense of humour had been nurtured by them over the years, and the men she had lost would forever be in her memory for their wonderfully naughty jokes. Now, if she was among new men, she would tell the jokes, to break the ice and put the newcomers to ease in her presence.

"Oh, he did not," she said softly. And she chuckled suddenly. "There is great truth to his father's words."

"Indeed?" Fíli said softly. Ilá caught his eye and smiled beautifully.

"Indeed. My grandfather used to say a pretty face is always the most dangerous." And she held up the small coin-purse she had lifted unnoticed from his brother's belt. "Because a lady is so often underestimated." She shook the purse between her fingers; the coins jingled and clinked merrily.

"You didn't!" Fíli grinned, eyes lighting up with recognition at the suede coin-purse embossed with the same seal as on his brother's tunics.

"Shall I share it with you to keep the secret?" she smiled.

"And watch to see how long it takes him to miss it," Fíli beamed mischievously.

"You can get off here," she said, as they reached the thicket, the pot simmering away and filling the small glade with a rich fragrance that had her stomach knotting to be filled. "Let Pearl graze—"

"Argh!"

"Ori? What've you done?" Fíli called, swinging his leg over and hopping down from the saddle to rush back a few paces, where Buttercup had decided to stop and graze on her namesake, Ori having attempted to climb off the saddle and failed miserably, his foot caught in a stirrup. Fíli and Ilá stopped, her with her arms folded over her chest holding her hunting-knife, Fíli with an eyebrow raised and his hand on the hilt of one of his identical swords, and both burst into laughter.

Poor Ori was sprawled in a heap on the ground; only, his foot was still caught in the stirrup and Buttercup was adamant in surging toward a patch of dandelions, dragging him alongside her. "Help. Help me! Oh, Durin! _Help_!"

"Calm down, Ori," Fíli chuckled good-naturedly, striding over. Chuckling softly to herself, Ilá wandered into the thicket, and while the dwarves dismounted and set their ponies to graze, retrieving their polished wooden bowls and wood-handled spoons, she added the tips of the asparagus to the soup, to soften for a few minutes. Ori groaned and grunted as he stretched his legs, marching with high-knees around the clearing for a few moments, a highly-comical sight, and while Ilá ran the ladle through soup, tasting it and moaning with delight at the flavours that exploded in her mouth, Fíli undid his bed-roll (fastened with suede loops and engraved metal toggles, one side of velvet-trimmed fur, the other of suede treated to repel water) and yawned and lay down.

"Here," she said softly, smiling as she retrieved Kíli's coin-purse from the mound of her neatly-folded clothing, and after counting out the coins, she pressed half of them into Fíli's palm; he grinned up at her lazily, and in the dappled sunlight his dark-blonde hair looked rich and golden, his eyes a brighter, deeper blue than she had yet noticed.

Fighting alongside men of the Rohirrim, Ilá had developed a deep appreciation for _blondes_. Though her home had traditionally been filled with those of a darker colouring—she herself had very dark hair—she had come to associate blonde men with vitality, rich laughter, pints of ale, dancing, a deeply-honourable code of conduct and affection. She was not robbed of those things amongst her own family, or men of the Dúnedain, but blondes were inherently, due to their colouring, sunnier, as Balin and Bofur might say, 'bonnier'.

"Isn't that Kíli's coin-purse?" Ori asked curiously, stopping his stretching with one knee held high, to frown bemusedly at the coins being passed around.

"Here," Ilá said softly, and she used her thumb to flip a polished gold coin to Ori, who caught the coin and grinned delightedly. The other dwarves arrived, their ponies grazing, Dori bearing the bowls, ready to berate Ori for his carelessness on the road, not paying attention—"Fíli might've been killed had it been an enemy, I didn't raise you to be careless."

"But—"

"It was a lesson directed to Fíli and Kíli as much as it was to young Ori," Ilá said fairly. "I would not wish their deaths due to sheer carelessness. I did have the added advantage of knowing these woods."

"Still, he should have been paying attention to the road," Dori said reprovingly, frowning at his youngest brother, "not the other boys' jokes and word-games, and stories about—" He broke off, giving Ilá a quick glance. "Well, perhaps he shall ask you some questions and put his curiosity to rest? And from now on, you shall be riding up with me so as I can keep an eye on you."

Ori sat cross-legged with his shoulders slumped, pouting and blushing after his telling-off—especially in front of Fíli and Kíli, whom he seemed deeply keen to impress.

"It's alright, Ori," Fíli said warmly, rumpling the youngest dwarf's hair. "If we weren't in company, Thorin would give us a good hiding for being outwitted by an elf."

"An elf?" Ori said, glancing at Ilá with wide-eyes, slightly confused. "Ilá's not an elf?"

"No, indeed I am not," Ilá said softly, stirring the soup with the ladle.

"You speak the language of the elves," Fíli said quietly, glancing at her across the cauldron as Bofur carried over several carved bowls. "I don't understand it but I recognise it for what it is when I hear it."

"It's a beautiful language, to be fair," Bofur remarked, as he brought over the three loaves of plaited potato-bread. "Back when, me da' used to teach me their letters."

"Did he?" Fíli frowned.

"Oh, aye," Bofur nodded. He glanced at Ilá. "My father was a chief toymaker in Erebor. The markets of Dale were filled with his imaginings. He used make beautiful, curious things for the fun of it. He used to tell me about all the toys he made—and the jewellery-boxes inlaid with jewels for the elven-ladies in the mirk-wood, their names enamelled into the metal."

"I have heard of the fabled toy-market," Ilá said softly, smiling; indeed, she had not only heard of the market, but possessed a now very rare collection of admittedly beloved toys from the Eastern kingdom, passed down through her mother's family in the female-line. And if the toys in her keeping were examples of the skills of the _least_-talented dwarves, she could only imagine how exquisite the toys of a master could be, for she knew back in the golden time of Erebor that even the lowliest dwarf had gold to lend and spend, and time to create beautiful things for the fun of it, the least-skilled rewarded handsomely by Men.

"Then you've heard of the wonders of Erebor," Bofur smiled. "Me da' used to say the treasures were in the toys, never the jewels. He said there was no greater treasure than the laughter of young children."

"That is very true," Ilá smiled sadly; the laughter of young boys echoed in her mind, calling her home when she was deep in the exotic places of Middle Earth, making her stomach hurt with longing and the pain of memory.

"If your old man's been losing his touch now, I should like to have seen the toys he made in his prime," Fíli said to Bofur, who chuckled.

"One of his favourite students," Bofur said, grinning, as he gripped Fíli's shoulder. He caught Ilá's eye and grinned easily. "This little lad keeps me da' alive."

"I do no such thing," Fíli said softly.

"You sit with him by the hour, asking for stories, begging him to teach you how to make the toys of yore," Bofur said. "You give him something to think about that makes him joyful again, after he's lost so much."

"Did he teach you to make that cunning star?" Ilá asked curiously. As she had wandered, she had thought of Fíli's wooden star-puzzle, trying to piece it together in her mind.

"And many other things besides," Fíli nodded. "I shall never reach the level of skill Bofur's father has…"

"Had I the means, I'd set up me da' in a palace, give him a set of tools, and let him have all the ore and jewels he desired to make his toys again. He always promised me an army of toy-warriors… Perhaps Ori shall knit frocks for me da's dolls," Bofur chuckled softly, for the embarrassed Ori had brought out a set of knitting-needles, and was working away steadily, biting his lip in concentration.

"You'll make me drop a stitch!" Ori said, frowning softly, as he gazed at his knitting. The others chuckled.

"Soup's ready," Ilá called softly, and the other dwarves migrated toward the cauldron; bowls were handed out, and the dwarves lined up to receive their dole, with a chunk of fresh potato-bread. The creamy, rich soup was fragrant, exploding with flavour in her mouth and Ilá ladled herself a large bowlful, removing the cauldron from the fire, and went to sit down on her bed-roll to enjoy it. Nearby, Fíli and Kíli had likewise set out their bed-rolls, dunking their bread in the soup and moaning almost indecently, enjoying every bite.

"I could get used to this," Bofur sighed, closing his eyes as he chewed a mouthful of soup-soaked bread, his ankles crossed as he leaned back against a tree.

"As could I," Gandalf muttered, alternating his pipe with his spoon, "but it would be foolish indeed to expect so flavourful and hearty a meal every day."

"This is wonderful, thank you," Bilbo said quietly, where he sat tucked up neatly out of the way, giving Ilá an appreciative smile. Ilá smiled back, resting her head back as she chewed a mouthful of bread.

The dwarves made short work of the soup; everyone had seconds to empty the cauldron, and due to their carelessness earlier, Ori, Fíli and Kíli were sent to rinse out the cooking-pot and the bowls in a nearby stream; they brought back water to boil and share between the skins, and Ilá started gathering her things to move on as the dwarves laughed and chatted rambunctiously amongst themselves, falling about on the grass.

"We should rest here. This seems a safe enough place to camp for the night," Thorin said, frowning around. Ilá straightened up.

"It would be wiser to move on and reach the bridge of Baranduin first, Master Dwarf, before we bed down for the evening," she said. Thorin gave her a cool look.

"Wiser, indeed?" he said softly, but with an authoritative bite.

"If we do not reach the Brandywine Bridge this evening, we shall be forced to camp on the borders of the Old Forest tomorrow," Ilá said quietly. "Or, less appealing still, the Barrow Downs."

"The—" Bilbo blurted, going pale. "The Barrow Downs? But they're haunted."

"If we reach the Brandywine by the end of this day, we can set out tomorrow morning and cover the distance to Bree," Ilá said. "The ponies are not yet tired, and the Baranduin is less than ten miles away. We have several hours until sunset."

The mob ruled.

However wise her advice was, no matter they knew how well-intentioned it was, it was ignored; and even Mr Baggins gave in when a vote was called. They had all been fed and watered, and with the birds twittering away gaily, the gentle trickle of the stream nearby, the dwarves could not bring themselves to mount their ponies again, even for so short a journey as to the Brandywine Bridge.

The dwarves brought out their pipes and personal stocks of weed; the fire was built up, and the bed-rolls unfurled in a circle around it. From the wicker-basket Ilá had bought from Mrs Maggot, ripe pears, juicy plums and sweet peaches were shared out to those who wanted them, and the young dwarves started a competition.

The top of Dwalin's head marked as it was by numerous _Cirth_ tattoos, the boys had designated each tattoo with a specific worth, and they took it in turns to spit cherry-stones at Dwalin's head, counting their scores with each rune they managed to hit. Dwalin had fallen asleep propped against a tree, hands folded on his stomach on his battle-axe, his chin to his chest, leaving the top of his head vulnerable to small cherry-stone missiles propelled by a chuckling Kíli, Ori grinning as he chewed, casting his eldest brother a wary look before narrowing his eyes and sending a cherry-stone sailing through the air.

Fíli, Ilá noticed, seemed rather detached from the fun, though he chuckled at it as he smoked; but, casting Thorin a glance, he popped a cherry into his mouth, glanced quickly at Dwalin, and launched a miniature missile at the dozing dwarf. The cherry-stone landed smack on the centremost tattoo marked on Dwalin's head (the 'bull's-eye' as it were); as Dwalin jolted awake with a snort, Fíli puffed on his pipe, and Kíli and Ori exchanged a wide-eyed glance as Dwalin noticed the collection of cherry-stones on his chest and the ground around him. He arched an eyebrow, glanced around, and clenched his battle-axe in his fists before surging to his feet with surprising agility, chasing the two youngest dwarves around the clearing. Fíli sat laughing softly, his smile incredibly lovely as he caught Ilá's eye, his own eyes twinkling merrily as Dwalin yelled threats in dwarvish to Kíli and Ori.

They eventually sought sanctuary in a tree whose boughs would not take Dwalin's muscular weight, and with Dwalin guarding the trunk, they spent the night nested in the upper-branches.

Unfortunately for Fíli, he had not counted on Ori escaping up the pine with his slingshot; and until Dori shouted up the tree to "cut it out, _now_, Ori, or I shall give you a thrashing you shan't forget!" Ori, encouraged by a giggling Kíli, shot pinecones down at Fíli for his part in their capture.

"It was Kíli's idea!" Ori protested. "He started it."

"I don't care who started it!" Dori called up the tree, hands on his hips. "I'm finishing it!"

"May I?" Fíli murmured to Ilá, indicating her shield, and Ilá chuckled, smiling in the dark, as he raised her shield above his head; pinecones sporadically bounced off the shield, until the young dwarves got bored and stiff from perching on tree-branches. But they did not dare climb down the tree when Dwalin still guarded the trunk.

Fíli took the first watch; and as Ilá drifted off, tucked on her side under her weathered cloak, she could see the dwarf illuminated by the firelight, puffing gently on his pipe and playing with another of the curious star-puzzles he had entranced the children of Hobbiton with. This was a new star, larger than the one he had shown the children, and each highly-polished piece was inlaid in a delicate design of gold filigree, so that, as he pieced the star together, each point flashed and sparkled and shone in the firelight. A curious trinket to carry; there was probably the same amount of gold decorating the toy as in one of Ilá's headdresses. Which made it a handsome prize. Yet Fíli pieced it together over and over, every piece seemingly familiar in his clever fingers; and she noticed that while the other dwarves and even Bilbo and Gandalf carried long, curved clay pipes, Fíli's was a beautifully etched one capped with brass fittings.

Dozing off, Ilá was sure she heard Fíli murmuring quietly, a small voice from high above answering; glancing up, she could see Kíli illuminated by the moonlight in the boughs of the tree, his bow strung. They shared a double-watch. Probably so each had someone to talk to…and Fíli was protected by an unseen guardian while he guarded the others on the ground.

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**A.N.**: Please review! I love to hear people's thoughts. And the coin-purse, cherry-stones and pinecones set a precursor to future shenanigans between the young dwarves.


	6. A Slight Tiff

**A.N.**: Whatever Angelina and Brad's son's name is, the twin, I'd bet he'd be the perfect baby!Fíli. Can you imagine? Thorin sitting him in his lap before a fire, putting little berserker-braids in his blonde hair, Fíli sucking his thumb and playing with a helmed toy dwarf-warrior while Thorin tells him about Durin's Awakening, and the toys of Erebor?

There is a subtle variation in the film, that King Thrór was killed on the battlefield trying to reclaim Moria, when according to the _Appendices_, Thrór's murder by Azog was what prompted the great goblin-dwarf war that last nine years, culminating in the Battle of Azanulbizar. I'm going to stick to the film-version for this story…

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**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_06_

A Slight Tiff

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She rolled her eyes, smiling, and wandered away from the water: eleven dwarves stood shoulder to shoulder on the banks of the stream, each whistling the same jaunty tune while they pissed into the current. Bofur was swinging his hips as he whistled; and Dwalin and Óin were laughing raucously and ribbing Balin about "waking this morning with a _friend_" and while Fíli stood with his brass-capped pipe clamped between his lips, he punted Kíli in the leg with his boot—"_Oi_! stop it, Fíli, I'm writing your name!" Shy Ori was hiding behind a tree, and he scuttled upstream to wash his hands before he blushed, catching Ilá's eye, and packed up his bed-roll.

She had Opal, Bungo and Snowdrop saddled and ready to go before the dwarves rejoined Bilbo and Gandalf in the clearing; and for a moment they all paused, made sure they had everything, and discussed their day's journey. After they had crossed the Baranduin—the Brandywine, as Bilbo knew it—Ilá would go on ahead using the faster, wilder routes she had long since used on foot, to scout out the road past the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs.

If the other dwarves wished to make sure Fíli, Kíli and Ori paid attention to the road, they should perhaps not have stationed Bofur at the back of the procession, for he was just as bad as the young dwarves—in fact worse; he encouraged them! And his jokes and stories had Kíli breathless and almost falling out of his saddle; Ori hiccoughed for two hours together; and the subtle, almost reserved Fíli had tears splashing down his cheeks as he laughed. More and more, Ilá gravitated to the younger dwarves, and Bofur, whose sense of humour and easygoing, good-natured personality warmed anyone to him almost instantly.

It was while Bofur told stories and tales of his race that Thorin said something that rubbed several people the wrong way and left the procession simmering with tension, the way one telling-off can subdue a merry gathering instantly. He had a habit of doing so, and Ilá was beginning to understand he wore his bitterness and hatred like a shield, was intolerant of any who spoke light-heartedly or chuckled… In all his years of suffering, his hatred of the elves and of Smaug had stoked his bitterness and distrust; "The legacy of our kin is ours to protect from…_enemies_."

His dark eyes roved over Ilá, simmering with distrust and unkindness. Ilá gave him a measured look, sighing softly. "And which enemies be they?" she asked coolly.

"_Your_ kind."

"Would you please care to elaborate, O King of the Dwarves?" she asked coldly, glaring back at Thorin with as much heat as he glowered at her.

"You speak in the elven tongue. If you are not an elf yourself you are allied with them," Thorin growled. Ilá shook her head, sighing; his prejudice would be the death of him. And he would poison his young friends with it before his end.

"Whether you choose to believe it, I care not, but make no mistake the elves have not sat in their great halls nurturing their hatred and distrust for two centuries, plotting your downfall," Ilá retorted sharply.

"Their actions kindled that hatred; perhaps your friends have not told you their part in our downfall," Thorin said coolly.

"I know of the Desolation, Master Dwarf," Ilá said icily; she herself had relatives who perished in the fires. "I also know of Azanulbizar."

"What do you know of that battle?" Thorin snapped.

"How many did you lose that day, for a mine none dared enter for fear of Durin's Bane? The Drimrill Dale is forever stripped of its woodlands for the pyres you built to burn your dead," Ilá said, staring back at Thorin, whose eyes snapped and crackled with fire in his anger. "All those dwarves, your kin, friends, brothers, husbands, they all perished needlessly for your grandfather's senseless quest for Moria."

"He tried to reclaim our ancient home," Thorin hissed. "The birthright of our people."

"He knew the enemy's number, he knew of Durin's Bane still slumbering deep beneath the Dwarrowdelf… He led your kin to war needlessly. And he was slain before he had to know the grief and sorrow that has shrouded your people ever since," Ilá said coldly, glaring at the dwarf. "He never knew the guilt he ought for leading so many to their deaths without cause."

Thorin was off his steed in a moment, glowering as he stumped toward her. "You dishonour the name of my grandfather."

"I look back upon his mistakes and feel sorrow for those who had to pay for them," she snapped, eyes narrowed with dislike.

"If we suffered horrific losses that day, it was only because we had no aid," Thorin hissed.

"Do you speak of Moria…or of Erebor?"

"Either."

"And yet when you speak of either, you do not blame the dragon, or the orcs who overran your ancient palaces," Ilá said frostily, a cold sneer curling her lip. His prejudice had kindled his rage and warped his perception of the past; he now linked the elves intrinsically with the razing of Dale and the loss of Erebor, the decimation of his armies. Such prejudice, such a warped perspective, could have no saving grace. "You refer only to Thranduil of Mirkwood. A king who would not risk the lives of his people against a foe there was no hope in defeating."

"His army could have done much good," Thorin growled.

"Yes, Thranduil could have led his army into Erebor. They might have freed some of your people, and indeed one perhaps may have had luck with his bow and smote the fire-worm," Ilá said quietly, "but in that moment he recognised that most if not all of his people would be slain by the dragon. He valued their lives above all."

"You speak like an elf."

"I speak with _logic_," Ilá snapped back fierily. "Any true leader knows when your enemy is too great, you withdraw and regroup…" She sighed softly. "You grieve…but you move on."

"You cannot know of my grief." Ilá's eyes flashed as she glanced back at the dwarf-king, anger so fierce and cold turning her pale face to ice as her eyes crackled with cold-fire. She did not know _grief_?

"Are you so selfish to believe you alone have suffered? You alone have known loss?" she hissed.

"A dragon sacks Erebor and wipes out an entire city," Thorin growled. "Orcs overrun Moria, decimating our army. We wander alone in the wilds, begging for aid where none came."

"You know _nothing_ of the loss I speak," Ilá hissed, and her great sword rang in the quiet of the glade as she removed it from its sheath quick as lightning, to collide with a resounding metallic _clang_ as it blocked a throwing-knife from its path, intended to embed in her torso. The knife went flying into the trees, the sound of the collision ringing through the quiet of the wood, and as Bilbo called out the dwarves grabbed their arms. Ilá glared at Thorin Oakenshield…she did not know grief?

"Hey, now, that's no' on!" called Bofur's voice.

"_Thorin Oakenshield_!" The wood darkened, and in that moment Gandalf appeared twenty-feet high as he towered over the dwarf, shadows seeping into the wood and muffling the sound of birdsong. The ponies whinnied and snorted in fright, and the dwarf-king dropped his blade. "_I will not have you turning your hatred toward our friends_." Whatever magic he had conjured dissipated, and Gandalf the Grey resumed his usual appearance; the ponies settled (though Ori had to climb back atop Buttercup after falling out of the saddle in his own fright) and the dwarves each took a puff on their pipes to soothe their jangled nerves, casting wary glances as Thorin sheathed his sword.

Ilá started walking again; drawing level with the dwarf-king, she said quietly, "My life is a hard one, Master Dwarf. When all Middle Earth was laid open to me, I chose it, but one does not choose such a life without great cause."

She sheathed her sword and walked on. Did not know _loss_?

He had no idea. None at all.

He perceived nothing beyond his own wounded pride.

Ilá walked on, faster and further afield than the ponies could manage, simmering with anger and the ruffled feathers of a pride wounded; if she had wished she could have horrified that look off the dwarf-king's face by telling him of her losses…but they were hers, and he had not earned that knowledge.

In the wild, she was alone.

Alone meant she had no liabilities; none could be used against her, and she could not be used to bait and lure loved ones out of safety.

At all costs, when she was in the wilds she maintained the pretence that she was entirely without family, without kin. For if the Orcs of Moria or the goblins under the Misty Mountains ever learned that Ilá Dúnedain had family…they would be prizes above all the gold in Erebor.

'_Cannot know of my grief_…'

Her anger simmered hotter as she marched. She let it build, virulent through her veins as if molten gold or fire poured through her, for if she did not glower, she would weep. She would sob for her losses; the most recent were freshest in her mind, for they had been the most gruesome of all.

A dwarf without wife or children, Thorin Oakenshield could not know of her grief. Almost all day she marched, over the Brandywine Bridge, through the Old Forest on the borders of Buckland. The trees were ancient there, had voices of their own so the elves said. They used to tell her tales of the _Onodrim_, a race as old as the elves themselves, and even more intrinsically connected with nature, for they were the ever-living shepherds of the great woods and forests of the world.

Ever since childhood, hearing the songs of the elves, Ilá had been conscious of the trees and of growing things; she would have no fires except those built by dropped branches.

She went ahead through the Old Forest, wondering about Huorns—Ents that had stood still and now slumbered—scouting the path, and her anger was gentled when she came across a small party of elves journeying, in their fashion, to the woods on the western slopes of Ered Luin, visiting their kin there. Sharing _lembas _and wine, they spoke with her of news from the road, and she shared with them the path of the dwarves that they may avoid them; the elves had no wish to seek conflict on their journey, not least with dwarves heavily armed and deeply prejudiced against their people. They told her of the rumours of troll-sightings along the Hoarwell river, and of several Warg attacks on villages in the South Downs.

She searched for signs of Orós, waiting, but by sunset, a rich purple bleeding with vivid fuchsia and burning golden-copper at the horizon, it marked the third day of his outing; she did not worry, but by the time the dwarves' caravan was sighted, the golden-fuchsia had gone from the sky, now a deep, velvety navy, and only a few torches aided the last of the light to guide their path. As Ilá had predicted, they now had to make their camp in the Old Forest. Not so dangerous as the Barrow Downs with its wights, but she would have preferred they reach Bree to stop overnight, at the very least to have a hot bath, if they could not learn more news from travellers using the East Road.

Decidedly cooler the evening fell than the last few days had been, and Ilá had a fire blazing by the time Gandalf's steed snorted and allowed him to dismount. Unlike yesterday, however, Ilá had not carried the cooking-pot with her and had dinner ready for the dwarves; Thorin ignored her, and it seemed Fíli and Kíli had been filling Ori's head with tales of her exploits on the ride, for he gazed at her with wide eyes, fearful.

The large breakfast she had prepared the morning of their departure from Hobbiton, the soup she had prepared yesterday and the breakfasts she had helped prepare the past two mornings, all combined to give the dwarves a grand impression of her cooking, and despite Thorin Oakenshield's coldness and apparent hatred toward her for her choice in friends, Ilá was put on supper-duty. Calculating their ease in gaining new supplies from Bree the following day, Ilá sat cross-legged before the fire, sweating one finely-chopped onion, several cloves of garlic and several thick-cut slices of smoky bacon in a bit of butter, before adding great chunks of courgette, aubergine, two large red onions cut into segments, a lot of tomatoes, diced up, and a handful of quartered mushrooms, letting it all cook and simmer into a thick vegetable stew. Several sausages had their skins removed, and she made meatballs out of them, frying them on Dori's skillet. The dwarves, apparently, could not survive a single meal that did not feature meat in some form. She added freshly-shelled peas and beautiful segmented runner-beans to the vegetable-stew a few minutes before it was ready to dish up, by which time the dwarves had all retrieved their pipes and sat cackling with laughter and talking amongst themselves in dwarvish.

"What news from the road?" Gandalf asked, perched on a rock beside the fire, and his bushy eyebrows sent wicked shadows up his brow.

"_I encountered a group of elves journeying to their kin south of Ered Luin_," she answered softly, aware that Thorin, sat close to the fire with his pipe smoking, narrowed his eyes distrustfully and glowered.

"_What say they_?"

"_They hear rumours of trolls coming down from the Ettenmoors, following the Hoarwell_," she said softly. "_Three Warg attacks on separate settlements have been reported in the South Downs_."

"_Any news from your information-gatherer_?" Gandalf asked.

"_He has not yet reappeared,_" Ilá said softly. "_He will come, when he has news_."

"_If they are ravaging villages in the South Downs, they may yet only be waylaying travellers on the Road to survive_," Gandalf said softly, and Ilá gave him a dubious look.

"_Nanduhirion was long ago, yet the orcs do remember, and shudder for their losses_," Ilá said quietly. With a very subtle glance at Thorin, Ilá said, "_Especially those that survived it…_" The wizard knew to whom Ilá was referring; if a party of Orcs was raiding the villages of Eriador, there could be no mistake who their captain was. There had been peace since the war between dwarves and orcs, most of the surviving orcs fleeing the Misty Mountains to plague Rohan. But a great host of goblins remained hidden deep beneath the rock by the High Pass, Ilá knew, and there were some that had escaped the routing of Moria, hidden deep within the abandoned palaces.

"If you are speaking of our journey ahead, cease speaking in _tongues_, that we may all understand and take part of the discussion," Thorin hissed, and Ilá glanced up. Ilá gazed levelly at him, until he cast his eyes downward.

"We were discussing trolls following the Hoarwell River down from the Ettenmoors," Gandalf said calmly. "There have been sightings. We have some miles yet to cover before we reach troll-country, yet if I know this road as well as I believe, we must hope not to encounter trouble before we reach the Trollshaws."

Ilá glanced subtly at Gandalf; he did not mention the Orcs.

Dinner was doled out, and it was telling that Ilá, Gandalf, Dori and Mr Baggins loaded their bowls with chunky vegetable stew, while most of the other dwarves fought over the meatballs.

"It's vegetables," Kíli grimaced uncertainly, glancing at his brother as they approached the fire with their bowls and spoons.

"It smells too good not to try some," Fíli said, doling a good helping of vegetable-stew into his bowl. Without perhaps realising she could hear them talking quietly, he added, "Besides, it would be rude not to have some when it was cooked for us."

"Alright, _Mum_, give me some," Kíli sighed, and Ilá gazed at Fíli, wondering. He had obviously listened to the manners his mother had tried to instil in him as a child; whose parents did not tell their children to eat what was put in front of them, especially when they were, loosely defined, guests at her table, for she had cooked the meal. It was not dwarves' preferred food, perhaps, she knew their love of juicy meat ripe from the spit and foaming ales, but she had cooked it, and it was a hearty meal full of good things the earth put forth and was wholesome.

"Mother would say the same," Fíli said quietly. "She would not wish us to follow Thorin's example in manners." Kíli snorted.

"How she deflected that knife…" he said quietly, and Ilá focused on her meal as the brothers talked quietly, "I couldn't do that."

"Not on the first try," Fíli agreed.

When the lid was set on the cooking-pot (there were still several decent servings to be had of it) and taken off the fire, and the dwarves had settled on their bed-rolls, some with their pipes lit, sending smoke-rings into the inky sky, but there were no songs this evening; after a later dinner than had been usual the last few days, they were tired.

"Are we sure it's safe to camp here?" Ori asked uncertainly, gazing around.

"'Course it is," Kíli said confidently. "Just because there've been rumours about Orcs in this neck of the woods doesn't mean they're truth. Many folks around here are keen to sensationalise lone Warg attacks."

"Warg…attack?"

"One bite, they'd have your head," Fíli nodded sombrely, gently puffing on his pipe. "Though I'd prefer a quick death from a Warg than to be caught by trolls."

"Spit you over the fire, they would," Kíli nodded, gazing earnestly at Ori. Ilá glanced over at the boys—for, in dwarf-terms, they still were almost adolescent—her attention snared by their joking over trolls. She had no love of goblins or Wargs; Orcs and trolls were perhaps equal in the amount of hatred she had for them. Reminded of her losses, fresh from her argument with Thorin Oakenshield, she had to bite her lip from speaking harshly to them. They were having a little fun—poor Ori was always the subject of the young brothers' fun, and he always took it in the good-natured way it was intended.

"Or eat you whole," Fíli shrugged slightly, with a thoughtful frown.

"At least it would be quick," Ilá said softly, and Ori jumped ever so slightly; she had been quiet all evening, and perhaps hadn't seen her sitting in the shadows nearby, almost directly behind him. "Not so your death if you came under the mercy of the spawn of Ungoliant."

"Ungoliant?"

"She came before the world, an evil spirit in the form of a giant spider," Ilá murmured, gazing at Ori steadily. "She aided the Vala Melkor, and when he double-crossed her, she trapped him in one of her great webs. His cries awoke the Balrogs of Angband, who rushed to aid their master, thrashing Ungoliant with their whips of flame."

"But…that was…before time began," Ori muttered, wide-eyed. "That was the time of the Silmarillions."

"Indeed. Ungoliant's end came when her hunger was so dark and consuming, it drove her to devour herself. Not before she had mated with spiders, to devour them and use her full-grown children, the Giant Spiders, as a source of food," Ilá said softly. "There are tales… Have you ever heard of Cirith Ungol? It is a pass through the Morgul Vale, into Mordor…it is named for the giant spider that has lived there beyond memory. And there are rumours the spawn of Ungoliant, the Giant Spiders, still live in the darker places of this earth, the woods…"

Ori's eyes were wide as saucers as he gazed fearfully at Ilá, gulping. When an owl hooted some paces off, he visibly jumped, gripping his slingshot with white knuckles. Fíli glanced at Ilá, giving her a very subtle wink; he had his pipe clamped between his lips, and she noticed his knife flashing and shining in the firelight as he carved the bark off a small twig.

"Ori, you're on first-watch," Thorin barked, and the youngest dwarf turned eyes wide as dinner-plates on his king. Something rustled in the underbrush out of sight, and he jumped; Fíli and Kíli chuckled softly, exchanging mischievous grins.

"I'll take next watch, Ori," Ilá said softly, and the little dwarf blinked quickly at her, his jaw unhinging somewhat. "Wake me in a few hours…"

Perhaps the prospect of waking Ilá Dúnedain in the middle of the night was more than Ori could bear; or perhaps Fíli and Kíli had spent the entire day winding Ori up with tales of her exploits.

Either way, it wasn't Ori who protested; he seemed too fearful of her to naysay her. But Thorin barked something in dwarvish to Fíli, who frowned, sighed, said something quietly to Ori, and glanced at Ilá somewhat apologetically.

"Here, Ori," Fíli said, when the others had hunkered down under their blankets, and Ori sat propped by the fire gazing around with wide eyes. "If you come to any trouble, Orcs or Wargs or giant spiders…just give this a few sharp blasts." And he handed Ori a slim penny-whistle, whittled from a twig, barely longer than her hand; it was smooth and glowed in the firelight, though it had been roughhewn, and Ilá wondered what else Fíli was capable of creating if he had more time and better tools. Fíli and Kíli chuckled soft and low as they tucked themselves up under their blankets, grinning mischievously at Ori as he sat, jumping every time an owl hooted; they had, the past few nights, set up their bed-rolls close together, with their favourite blade unsheathed within easy reach, ready to spring into action.

Ilá was woken, later that night, for her watch, only it wasn't Ori who peered down at her, gently rubbing her shoulder. It was nicer than a rough shake, and she peeked through one eye; gold glinted above her face, and she blinked before squinting in the silver-limned darkness. It wasn't Ori; it was _Fíli_.

"Thought I was on watch after Ori," she mumbled.

"You are. Thorin wants a double-watch," Fíli half-whispered, as she sat up, yawning deeply, rubbing her face in her palm. …_double-watch_? she thought, yawning again, and frowned subtly at Fíli's back as he turned back to the fire. She sighed, yawned and stood up, wrapping her bed-roll around her to sit beside the fire, her sword balanced on her knees.

"Ori asleep?" she murmured.

"I just relieved him," Fíli said, with a smirk. Even in her tiredness and their extremely short acquaintance, Ilá knew that smile meant mischief.

"What did you do?"

"Did you not hear the whistle?" Fíli grinned. She frowned; had she been so deeply asleep she had not heard Ori's distress?

"No, I did not," she said bemusedly. Fíli just grinned again.

"No, nor did I," he chuckled, "though Ori's yells as the bat flapped around his head did." Ilá laughed very softly. "I think he'd convinced himself it was a spawn of Ungoliant trying to web him." Ilá grinned to herself. "He made me promise never to say a word to the others." Ilá smiled.

"Kíli shall have fun with that," she said softly, and Fíli laughed.

Being the watch was always dull. And surrounded by strangers—well, they were strangers to Ilá, but amongst themselves every dwarf had a connection to the other, as this party seemed to be made up of those most loyal to Thorin Oakenshield—it was somewhat lonely and awkward. She did not know Fíli, and he had heard only rumours of her reputation for ruthlessness; but she knew, 'adventures' in the wild could forge bonds very quickly.

They sat in silence, keeping the fire built, burning hot, and she sat listening to the crackle of the flames, her ears twitching at every tiny sound. She learned that Fíli was not accustomed to living out-of-doors, for even the tiniest sounds had him gripping the hilt of one of his identical swords, scowling as he searched the darkness. When an owl hooted a few yards off, Fíli jumped.

"Owls do that when they dive for prey," she said quietly, and he glanced at her; she gazed at the fire, yawning subtly, hiding it behind her hand. He relaxed somewhat, until about an hour later they heard loud snuffling in the underbrush. Ilá listened, and smiled to herself. Fíli glanced at her, as if to ask what the noise was.

"Hedgehogs," she said softly, smiling warmly. The hedgehog was one of her favourite animals. "A family of them, by the sound of it. For little creatures they do make a lot of noise."

"Ori would most certainly have feared a pack of Wargs was upon us," Fíli chuckled softly. Ilá nodded. He sighed. After a few moments, he asked, "How long have you lived in the wild?"

"Too long," Ilá said quietly, gazing unblinkingly at the fire. She sighed, feeling a heaviness weigh on her upper-torso, restricting her ribs. She kneaded the heel of her palm to her chest over her heart, which was seizing uncomfortably. She had been away from home for far too long. Though there were fewer reasons bringing her back there now than there once had been.

After a moment, Fíli said quietly, "Thorin should not have thrown that knife at you."

Ilá glanced up, surprised. "I perhaps should not have said what I did."

"You only said what others still do of the war… Our mother lost one of her brothers, her father and her grandfather in the Battle," Fíli said softly. "And for what? The orcs have diminished, they plague only Rohan, and in small numbers…yet Moria will be forever lost to us."

"Durin's Bane," Ilá said quietly, nodding. "I should still not have said what I did. The memories of the dead are all we have left of them, I know better than to threaten that."

"Well, Thorin should cease to take every thing you say as a personal affront," Fíli shrugged slightly, frowning; he glanced over at the furred mound that was his sleeping leader. "My mother says his pride has always been his downfall."

"He has good reason to be angry with the elves of Mirkwood," Ilá said quietly. "I know his prejudice toward all elves and those who associate with them stems from Erebor."

"I do not share his prejudice," Fíli said quietly, gazing at her evenly. She did not look away for a moment.

"I thought all dwarves have an inherent suspicion of elves," she smiled.

"As you must have certain guardedness toward strange Men," Fíli pointed out, and Ilá inclined her head, acquiescing. "But it does not mean you are prejudiced against them. Only wary of their intentions…" He sighed heavily, glancing over at the sleeping figure of the dwarf-king. "Thorin's hatred is too great. I think there is little the elves could do now that would ever ease it. And even if they tried…he would not let them."

"And you?" Ilá prompted curiously. "Thorin is your kin. He must have had some influence on you."

"A great influence," Fíli nodded. "But I have never been injured personally by any elf. I have never even seen one. Thorin's prejudice is his alone; I have no claim to it."

"No?"

"The fall of Erebor came long before I was born. I may have a claim to that sorrow as a member of the dwarven race, but I have lived a very different life to Thorin. To Balin, Dwalin…those few who survived Azanulbizar," Fíli sighed heavily, looking down at his pipe as he rested on his elbow. His features were solemn, but handsome. "I never knew Erebor; my home has always been the Blue Mountains, where we have peace. Thorin worked tirelessly to rebuild our prosperity there for many decades before I was born…" Ilá wondered how old—or rather, in dwarf-terms, how _young_ Fíli was, for she knew the lifespan of a dwarf covered many centuries, and if he had not even been born before the Battle of Azanulbizar, he must be younger than one-hundred and fifty years. Which was not so very old for a dwarf; it was, in the terms of Men, perhaps just coming of-age. Perhaps this quest was his chance to prove himself. "I do not know what happened with the elves that day when Erebor was lost, perhaps Thorin's hatred twisted his perception of the past… I have no care to carry that bitterness around with me. He is never joyful…never content. His resentment has alienated many who could love him."

Ilá gazed at the dwarf, wondering…he spoke as if an intimate relation to Master Oakenshield, not just a member of the dwarf-king's kin, which must be extensive; 'kin' referred to a network of many distant branches of the same nuclear family. Uncles, second-cousins, great-uncles and half-sisters, grandmothers-in-law and fraternal nieces twice-removed, all came under the umbrella of 'kin' and among hobbits, at least, Ilá had heard of even the most distant of kin called 'cousin', which made the concept utterly confusing. For all she had heard of Thorin Oakenshield, which was admittedly little beyond the Battle of Azanulbizar, when he had risen to fame as the turning-point in the battle, and his founding of the iron-mines in the Blue Mountains, Ilá knew that the dwarf-king in exile maintained no family.

"He remains unmarried," she said thoughtfully, glancing at Fíli. "Strange, for a king, even one in exile."

"He has his heirs…" Fíli said quietly, again gazing down at his pipe and fiddling with the bowl as he sighed, "though I do not know that he looks upon them with pride always… What of you?" He glanced up, eyes blazing like sapphires in the firelight.

"Me?"

"Your race has been scattered across the broken kingdom since the fall of Isildur," Fíli said, and Ilá smiled sadly at the condensed history-lesson. "Just as our race has since we lost Moria…later, Erebor… But even we have kin."

"You have more of it than I do…" Ilá smiled, but it was strained. She had less family than she used. "We Rangers are few and far between in this day and age. There may come a time when there will be only handfuls of us protecting the Free Peoples, as best we can…" She fell into silence, thinking; it was always a sorrowful thought, that her once-great people were being swallowed into the mists of time, now no more than legendary warriors of a bygone era, little more than names, their selfless deeds forgotten.

For a little while, they sat in silence, the crackle of the fire and the sporadic hooting of owls and snuffling of hedgehogs and badgers the only noise, the dwarves so deeply asleep their snores had ebbed, and Ilá rested on her back, gazing up at the stars through her eyelashes, listening to the peacefulness, Fíli cleaning out the bowl of his pipe, glancing up every time an owl hooted in the distance.

"What was his name?" a quiet voice came from the dark, and she turned her head to gaze up at Fíli; he had stood to stretch his legs, grimacing as he bent his knees, before sitting down, packing tobacco into his pipe.

"Whose name?" she asked softly. Fíli gazed at her; his features were burnished by the fire, his hair crackling like polished gold in the firelight.

"The man you lost," Fíli said, and she blinked several times. She frowned, a little bemused. "You told Thorin you did not choose this life lightly. Your bearing, the rings upon your fingers, your elf-knowledge…you were not born into a rugged life. You could have wed richly and led a life surrounded by fine things." Ilá smiled to herself; she even chuckled, turning back to the stars. He had noticed that, had he? Just as she noticed he bore noble crests upon his weaponry and raiment, though never ostentatiously; the only truly rich thing he possessed was his brass-capped pipe…and the golden star tucked deep into the folds of his tunics. "Instead you seclude yourself in the wilds, facing danger after danger. You would not have been introduced to such a life unless by a man who had lived that way."

Ilá smiled to herself, gazing up at the stars, though there was no humour in it; he had noticed the rings, her straight-backed bearing. "That is a little true. I was not born to hard living. My childhood was blissful, full of warmth, affection, laughter," she said softly. She glanced at Fíli and sighed. "But it was the way of our family to leave such a life upon turning of age, to go out into the wilds and become a Ranger. To help our people. Before me, my father was a Chieftain of our order in the wild. His brother also…before them, their father, my grandfather… It is also the way of my family to be cut down before our time."

"So you took up their mantle," Fíli said softly, and there was something curious in his tone…as if he was impressed.

"The Rangers of the Dúnedain guard the Free Peoples. But our numbers dwindle ever lower… I went into the wilds because it is the legacy of my people. And we need all the help we can get," she said sadly, licking her lips. She sighed before glancing at Fíli, saying, "I am but one woman, but I hope at least my actions have done just a little good in this world."

Fíli sighed heavily, gazing steadily at her. She canted her head to the side, wondering what was going on inside his head, for he looked so introspective…and sad. "Tell me what has you so thoughtful," she said curiously. Fíli gave her a faint half-smile.

"I know very little of the world," he said quietly. "My entire life has been spent in the Blue Mountains… But I know I am much more fortunate than many… My father used to say 'Courage for those who cannot defend themselves'… There are many unable to aid Thorin in his quest to reclaim our home, no matter how hard they may wish to be of service to our king."

Ilá smiled softly. "And that is why you are here, guarding your sleeping companions from hedgehogs and strange Dúnedain warrior-maidens?"

Fíli's eyes twinkled as he smiled at her. "I protect Thorin…and try to keep Kíli from doing something reckless."

"Was it his idea to come along?"

"We agreed together," Fíli said, sighing softly, glancing over at the sleeping mound that disguised his brother. "There is nothing else we would rather do."

They fell silent, listening to the quiet, the crackle and spitting of the fire, the very earliest birds beginning to sing and trill as the sky lightened a shade, and the dwarves slumbered on. After what seemed an age, Fíli murmured, "You did not tell me his name."

"Whose?"

"The name of the man you lost," Fíli said quietly, gazing at her, eyes sweeping over her features.

"Would it do any good to tell you?" Ilá asked, with a very sad smile. "They are gone…they will never return. And yet I will see them forever in my dreams. I see the ghosts of things that might have been…had things been different."

Fíli sighed. "Thorin believes my brother and I take much for granted. Our home, our wealth…I believe he disdains us for not having known war."

"Having known it he should recognise it for what it is that you have not experienced the reality of a life of war," Ilá said, frowning. "A blessing. And if he could go back to the days of Erebor, and live out his life there in peace, and plenty…do you think he would pass over the opportunity? Instead of living the way he has?"

"He would not be Thorin Oakenshield."

"No. Would you have him any other way?"

"There were times when I was a child when I had wished he had been different," Fíli said softly, gazing first at the furred mound hiding his king, then at the young dwarf flat on his back and snoring. He smiled, before glancing at Ilá. "Kíli and I used to play 'Warrior'. With our wooden training-weapons, we would play 'Erebor', taking turns to slay the dragon Smaug…" Ilá chuckled softly, so easily imagining two young boys playing with their wooden-swords, re-enacting the great deeds of their forefathers. "One day he heard us playing…it was my turn to slay the Defiler on the slopes of the Drimrill Dale. I'd never seen him so angry…" For a second, Fíli's expression went stark, then he raised the back of his hand to his cheek, eyes hollow.

"He struck you," Ilá guessed softly; she had never struck a child, though she could guess Thorin's emotions on seeing two young boys 'playing' at such a horrific battle.

"So I would not forget his wrath at us making light of the Battle," Fíli sighed heavily.

"You were children. Of course you did not realise the gravity of it…" Ilá said quietly. She sighed softly. "My mother used to say, we can forget what people said, and what they did…but we never forget the way they made us feel."

Fíli's expression was thoughtful and introspective for the remainder of their watch; they did not speak after that, but listened, and when Nori took over their watch, Ilá sank onto her bed-roll and fell deeply asleep, dreaming of the ones she had lost, resurrected by her conversation with Fíli.

* * *

**A.N.**: What did you think?


	7. A Short Rest

**A.N.**: This nearly-23-year-old's parents just brought her _Harry Potter_ Lego out from the attic! I am happy beyond all belief; and perhaps I am just gearing up to go and invest in some _Hobbit_ Lego sets? After all, my father still has his original 60s _Lego_; it's an investment for my future children…that's what I'm telling myself, anyway…

Aria, in the film Arthur pronounces it 'Trist_r_a_m_', and it can be spelled either way in the old stories; personally I think Tristram has more character, I don't know why. But he influenced a lot of my characters, particularly Ilá and one of my other OC characters; Queen Sibylla of _Kingdom of Heaven_ also inspired Ilá, though perhaps only in look and a little in temperament.

To those who criticise my ability to count, I know there were thirteen dwarves; I believe in a previous chapter note, I addressed the fact that I had removed Bombur from the story. That makes twelve dwarves, plus Bilbo (Gandalf goes off by himself) and Ilá becomes the lucky fourteenth.

* * *

**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_07_

A Short Rest

* * *

The fourth day of their journey, the company encountered its first danger, and it waylaid their journey for well over a day and a half. It was not a pack of Orcs, nor Wargs; the spawn of Ungoliant, rumoured in the great East wood, had not traversed the Misty Mountains to hunt them in the Old Forest on the border of The Shire; nor had evil Men waylaid their party for the gold in their pockets and the food in their packs.

The first and worst danger they encountered was the weather. A great thrashing storm, the kind that usually occurred in midwinter, had darkened the skies before the sun could even peek at the earth. The deep rumbling of thunder had the ponies spooked, lightning crackling across the sky, utterly mesmerising. Though the dawn had come briefly, bright and still like polished steel, as it often did before a great frost, the skies had quickly darkened as if some great giant in the clouds had poured ink across it, with great billowing clouds the colour of iron and coal limned by the lightning that had begun just as the company had awoken and started wishing for breakfast.

In their wisdom, Ilá and Gandalf had decided to move the party onwards as far and fast as they could before the storm could waylay them permanently; they still journeyed through the Old Forest, but the East Road wound tenuously through many grassy cliffs and crags, several of which had natural caves extending into their faces, and which Ilá had taken occasion to use in times past.

Glóin had had the sense to bundle some firewood inside his waterproofed bed-roll, as well as several others, before it had started raining, and all that sustained most of them as the ponies clip-clopped on was the thought of a blazing fire. Everyone was entirely miserable within two hours; the skies had darkened to pitch, illuminated only by the lightning, and had not Ilá and Gandalf known their path from memory, they might have found it difficult to navigate the East Road through the Barrow Downs, for the rain had become so thick, Ilá wondered whether giants stood with buckets, throwing the water in their faces in great waves that sent the ponies staggering several times. Gandalf illuminated the tip of his staff for a little light to go by, and remained at the head of the caravan; Ilá, at the back with Fíli and Kíli, rode astride Snowdrop, who had a propensity to want to bolt every time the thunder rumbled and lightning flashed across the great open sky. She also managed Opal, trotting beside them miserably; Fíli and Kíli shared responsibility of Bungo.

In her time, Ilá had been to the Coast, even sailing to the islands of Himling and Tolfolas in the south at the mouth of the Ethir Anduin; there was nothing so terrifying as the sea during a storm. And with the amount of water churning around them, trying to knock them out of their saddles, Ilá thought she was back, battling Corsairs on one of their dark ships during a storm. Water-battles were some of the very worst; for if one did not die of a wound, the water, especially during a storm, would claim you. Waterlogged, she had been lucky to survive that battle at all.

In fact, after going overboard during that battle, in the midst of a storm, Ilá could say that her men had probably been drier than the dwarves now were. Ilá herself had been lucky enough to dress before the storm hit; she had unrolled her quilted, fur-lined underskirt, attaching it to her belt with suede loops, buttons and toggles beneath her tunics and overdress, and thrown on her jacket and her rich fur cloak, which could be worn with the fur on the outside or with the rich purple wool facing out; she had covered her head with an ancient sapphire-blue hood once part of a cloak, with a flap that folded out over her brow to shield her face, and to which she could attach by means of four small buttons a knitted cowl with a quilted lining, warming her neck, chin, and over her cheeks and nose, leaving only her eyes bare to the elements, though she brought her turban, hood and cloak-hood low over them.

All things considered, she was toasty as a bear in hibernation and would not for the world have come out of her gorgeous little cocoon of warmth and dryness. The others were not so lucky, and perhaps that came from the relative lack of experience of a life always in the wilds. She always carried with her whatever she could possibly have occasion to use, be it a needle and thread, a sleeveless overdress in hot weather, bandages, extra socks or the fur-lined quilted underskirt that she could, unhooking several toggles, loops and buttons, turn into an extra blanket if her bed-roll did not suffice. Fíli and Kíli, the closest to her, were barely visible five feet in front, yet whenever she caught glimpses of them in the flashes of lightning, they looked utterly miserable; they had given up using their hoods, pushed from their heads by the howling wind every time they tucked them into place.

"_HOW MUCH FURTHER_?" someone shouted at the top of their lungs; it was Thorin, and his anger and impatience was growing with every lash of water that hit them. Ilá recognised the area, knew caves would start to appear in the rock-face as they tottered along sinuous and very dangerous paths on the cliffs' edges, but most of them were downward-sloping, and would be easily flooded, especially with the amount of rain. They had already navigated an open meadow with the trees waterlogged a foot above their roots; she had never seen it so bad around this area. But they were avoiding the Barrow Downs, which had seemed all Bilbo wished for on the outset of this day's leg of the journey.

It could not have been later than midday by the time the light of Gandalf's staff moved off to the left, but it was already darker than dusk in the storm. The continuous lightning showed flashes of the terrain, and Ilá knew exactly which cave the wizard was leading them to, a dome-roofed cavern with a very slight upward-incline, no paths leading from the back except for a hot-spring that took up a corner of the area, naturally guarded with rocks that steamed due to the hot water. It was more than large enough for twelve dwarves, a hobbit, a woman and a wizard and all their steeds and supplies, and Ilá found it great good fortune no other travellers had sourced it as a place of refuge from the storm. Guiding Opal, she was the last one into the cave with Snowdrop, but just as quickly as the others had the ponies unsaddled, their packages and supplies distributed along an internal wall, the ponies shivering and steaming.

Inside the cave, it was dry and, thanks to the hot-spring, a lot warmer than expected; the sounds of the storm were muffled by the considerably small mouth of the cave, and by the time the ponies were all brushed down and their shoes checked, nosebags in place to placate them, Óin and Glóin, who could make a fire anywhere, had the entire cavern blazing with rich amber light. Dori, Ilá thought, was so used to being motherly to his two younger brothers that he took over, and the other dwarves let him; each of the dwarves and Mr Baggins stripped to their smalls, and, using the crags of the rock, Dori constructed a washing-line zigzagging across the cave; while the fire grew higher and hotter, Dori wrung out all of the clothes and pegged them to the line.

The rich furs of Ilá's cloak had shed most of the water thrown her way; so she was for the most part very dry, just her face, fingers and toes very cold.

"It cannot be past midday," Thorin said, wringing out his jerkin with an angry glower while the other dwarves sat as close as they could around the fire, wrapped in their blankets.

"It is three o'clock, as a matter of fact," Gandalf said thoughtfully, tapping out the contents of his pipe. "I find it great good fortune it is only a storm that first befalls this company."

"We shall be trapped here until the storm relents," Thorin growled impatiently.

"Indeed," Gandalf nodded. "It would absolutely be wisest to shelter here until the downpour eases. It is a shame we could not reach Bree last evening." Ilá glanced over at Gandalf very quickly, then bit back a smirk and wrung out her socks, which alone seemed to have been drenched and therefore owed to her icy toes.

"Let us have something to eat," Balin shivered.

"Aye, boil some water," Bofur chattered, "we shall have a cuppa."

"M-my mother used t-to say n-nothing can't be made a little b-better with a n-nice cup of t-tea," Bilbo chattered, shivering. "Especially with a slice of Beryl Cotton's famous fruit-cake."

"That's a good idea, an' all," Dori said happily, his face lighting up. "Where's the fruit-cake gone? Which pony bore them?"

"Opal, I should think," Ilá said, shivering, and wiped her wet face. The fire was stoked, and the dwarves set Dori's kettle over the flame, boiling enough water to give them all a good hot drink.

"Right, boys, I want you all out of those soaking-wet clothes," Dori ordered, for shy Ori had not stripped to his small shorts, and Fíli and Kíli were apparently shivering too much to do anything but stand and try to communicate through the chattering of their teeth, though they had been muttering darkly as they tried to dry their hair with equally-damp, thin towels.

"—now, don't be daft, Ori, we've all got the same bits! Strip down, now! You too, Fíli, Kíli, or you shall catch your deaths of pneumonia, and what a merry party we shall be, going to your mother to tell her your fate."

"But—" Ori shot Ilá a shy glance.

"Come on, Ori," Fíli shuddered, shaking violently as he fumbled to undo his belt-buckles, glancing quickly at Ilá with the faintest hint of a blush. "Take your clothes off. Our lady won't mind."

"You've already seen _her_ bare legs. Anyway, if the sight of Óin and Glóin in their smalls does not send her into a fainting fit, I doubt naught can," Kíli chattered, shivering as he wrestled his way out of a sopping-wet hooded tunic. He got stuck. "Fíli. _Fíli_! I can't get out. _Help_…" Fíli tugged on his brother's tunic, to the amusement of several as the tunic came free and Fíli almost went flying, stumbling backwards with the momentum of his tugs. The same happened when the boys each tugged the other's boots off; Dori whisked the boots away to line them in a circle directly around the fire to dry them off.

While Fíli and Kíli had been helping to extricate each other from their sopping clothes, and Dori had been coaxing Ori to undress in front of the other dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf, Ilá had slipped behind the overdress and under-skirt that she had pegged up, and climbed out of everything but her smalls, which were really a pair of small-shorts attached to a sleeveless short-tunic by a pair of buttons front and back, crimson in colour and made of cotton with faded embroidery at the hems; she also unbound her hair, for at the front her turban was soaked.

She pegged the long length of fabric beside her skirts and it felt very odd to have her two thick, incredibly long plaits weighing down her back and over her shoulder. A length of suede-cord crossed her hairline, wrapped throughout the two plaits, where she had bound the ends, and she carefully unknotted the suede, gently unravelling the long, heavy plaits. She unwrapped her little bar of elf-made soap from the inside of her pack and stepped to the steaming rocks that acted as a natural barrier from the hot-spring, tested the temperature with her toe, and, vaguely aware of eyes on her, stepped into the water. She stepped out into the pool until the water was waist-height, then dipped down, until her shoulders were submerged. Warmth flowed over her, searing her skin, thawing her frozen toes and fingertips, making her utterly relaxed.

She saw Fíli and Kíli exchange a look, both dressed down to their smalls, and no sooner could they get the clasps out of their hair than they had barrelled into the water with a _whoop_! Great sighs of relief and delighted laughter echoed off the cavern-walls, and good-humoured Bofur joined them, wearing nothing but his hat, with his lit pipe clamped between his lips, making Ilá laugh for the first time all day. The hot water did wonders for their temper; "the lads" were soon yelling with delight and splashing about, as if they were children in the stream on a hot afternoon; even Bilbo set his feet in the hot water, smiling at the brothers' antics as Bofur paddled about, keeping his chin (and his pipe) carefully above the water. When Kíli splashed at Ilá, she retaliated, ducking him under the water; Fíli swam up behind her under the water, tickling her waist, making her shriek a giggle and splutter as she almost choked on a mouthful of water. When Fíli cornered his brother with a bar of soap, Bofur had to help hold the younger dwarf still so Fíli could work the soap on the knots that had formed in Kíli's hair due to the wind.

"But Fíli, I _don't want_—"

"You'll be whining when you come to comb it," Fíli frowned, also with his pipe between his teeth, and Ilá thought them such a picture she would remember it always, a pouting Kíli drowned in his long, dark hair, guarded either side by Bofur in his suede hat and long pipe, Fíli's frown of concentration with his brass-capped pipe flashing in the firelight as he lathered his brother's hair with soap. The fact that Bofur had his bare backside to her, with Fíli and Kíli seemingly not noticing or caring about the transparent nature of their smalls, only made her laugh louder to herself as she lathered her own hair with the elf-made soap and Kíli continued to pout and splutter, arms crossed tight over his chest; she could not help notice, either, that Fíli's clothing hid an extraordinarily well-toned physique. A faint dusting of hair gleamed golden in the firelight on his forearms and upper-chest, down to the hem of his smalls; his muscles were not overly large but tight, especially his back and shoulders.

They would have stayed in the water until their skin pruned, for it was deliciously warm and soothing, but when Ilá had finished rinsing the soap out of her hair, Fíli doused his brother with a last bowl of water, and Bofur strutted out of the water so confidently that Ilá couldn't stop laughing despite his nudity (not including the hat).

"—what do you mean, you didn't pack an extra pair of long-johns?" came Dori's indignant voice, and a bashful Ori mumbled embarrassedly in response. "Where was I when Nori was dropping you on your head? What else did you forget to pack?"

"I didn't…" Ori mumbled, flushing embarrassedly; Dori gave him such a blistering frown that Ori scuttled to find his pack, taking from it a sturdy leather-bound book before handing it over to his eldest brother, who quickly unbuckled it and made disparaging noises and frowned at the contents.

While Fíli and Kíli dressed themselves in their dry spare garments, and Bofur refilled his pipe, sitting in nothing but his blanket while his only clothes dried, laughing loudly with Dwalin and Glóin, Ilá dressed in fresh smalls and socks, her long-johns, legwarmers, a long muslin under-dress, and her long, full-skirted dress of richly-embroidered deep-purple wool with long sleeves to her wrists; she drew a fresh length of fabric around her shoulders as a makeshift shawl, using a thin towel to squeeze-dry her hair. The purple dress was relatively new, and a favourite for cooler weather, for it was thick and incredibly warm.

She sat cross-legged on her bed-roll beside Fíli, who had his brother sitting right in front of him on his blanket, both sat cross-legged while Fíli attempted to comb the knots from his little-brother's hair. As he had predicted, Kíli was whining and grimacing, wincing every time Fíli had to exert a little pressure to get the comb through a tangle. It was so familiar a scene that, watching them, Ilá's heart ached, even as it sang for the familiarity, and the boys this vision reminded her of.

After spending the last hour at least laughing at Bofur's antics as he teased Kíli, Fíli grinning easier and happier, eyes twinkling whenever he caught her glance, the memory made her stomach sink, her shoulders grown heavy, and she sighed, no longer smiling, and turned away, toward the fire, absentmindedly drying her hair.

Very soon, everyone having taken time to catch their breaths, pack their pipes and warm their toes by the fire, Dori poured everyone a cup of tea—passing through a small village earlier, they had shared the cost of eggs, fresh milk, sausages and beef from the nearest farm—and they took equal portions of one of Mrs Cotton's famous almond-decorated fruit-cakes. "—to tide you over till dinner," Dori said, smiling as he handed Ilá a cup of tea and a slice of cake, with a slight bow.

"I think we shall use those root-vegetables and beef tonight," she said, and Dori nodded.

"I think so, too; a good hearty stew would set us right up," he said, glancing around the cave, glowing with warmth from the fire, the drying clothes steaming on the precarious washing-line. The dwarves were becoming merry, with something hot to drink and sweet and filling to eat, sending smoke-rings to the ceiling; Bifur and Nori were playing some kind of game involving dice while Balin and Óin laughed creakily, eyes crinkling and tears shining upon their withered cheeks, and even Thorin seemed to be smiling in the shadows as he rested. What a difference a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake could make, even amongst a party of rough-and-ready dwarves used to a rugged life. Bilbo too was happier than he had seemed in a while; for though he had signed his contract, Ilá was certain he still had misgivings about 'adventures' when the weather was so terrible, and he had to stand watch for an hour or so, now that they were nearing the lands of Men rather than hobbits.

Ilá sat, slowly drying her hair, using her fingers to comb through most of it, keeping an ear out for Fíli and Kíli; the younger-brother didn't want his hair plaited, he was adamant about that. He quietly gave Thorin a look as Fíli rolled his eyes, instead gathering his younger-brother's dry, neatly-combed hair away from his face with an embossed clasp at the back of his head. Ilá used her fingers to comb her long hair; she had long ago ceased carrying a comb with her, plaiting and binding her hair to avoid knots and tangles. It was amusing to watch Fíli nimbly comb and separate his hair with two plaits either side of his face, keeping his hair from his temples and thus out of his face, with his own embellished clasp clipped at the back of his head. He actually had two such clasps, and the only bit he seemed to have trouble with was plaiting the hair he had gathered in the first clasp; Kíli braided it for him, using the second clasp to keep the plait in place.

In the corner, embarrassed and berated, Ori had his head tucked down and was using his fingers to comb out the plaits he had put in his ginger hair, carefully redoing the braids, his shoulders slumped, still pink-cheeked from Dori's telling-off. No weapon and no spare long-johns, Dori wondered how he could survive at all on his own; but drawing out a writing-kit from his pack, Ori seemed a little happier as he sipped his tea and ate his cake, scribbling in the leather-bound book, occasionally smiling to himself or glancing up across the cavern at various dwarves, Bilbo, even Ilá.

"Right, boys, come on, you're going to help," Dori exclaimed, and Fíli and Kíli glanced up, giving their best wide-eyed expressions. "Don't give me that look, you shall peel potatoes; you _shall_ help! It's been me and Lady Ilá doing all the cooking since we set out. And I've had Dwalin and Óin's cooking…"

"Is this a lesson in humility?" Kíli asked, crestfallen, and his brother chuckled. Kíli glanced hopefully at Thorin, who arched an eyebrow.

"It's character-building," he said, and Kíli deflated, obviously having hoped the older dwarf would excuse him.

"I have plenty character!"

"Very well. It's character-_improving_."

"Oi!" Kíli gaped. "You know I'm still scarred from the last time I had to work in the kitchens." And he held up his forefinger. Ilá raised her eyebrows and leaned closer.

"I don't see anything."

"Well, of course not, takes a trained eye trained in medicine to see such a thing," he said, snatching his finger back and pouting as he brought his knife from his quiver, while Fíli sighed and whipped a knife out of one of his gauntlets (he still sat in only his smalls, wrapped in a blanket, but his hair was shining cleanly, and his eyes sparkled); Ori was recruited—after much argument, apparently he was "doing something…important…" but he would not give further details, and he dared anybody to touch his leather-bound book while the ink dried. He was apparently very self-conscious of the contents of that book, for while Dori set him up with a knife and a good heap of potatoes, Ori kept shooting the book guarded looks.

While Dori bustled around the cavern, seeking out the beef, the sealed pot of flour, the onions and the fresh herbs, Fíli, Kíli and Ori sat knee-to-knee, cross-legged with a pile of root-vegetables before them; Fíli was in charge of the turnips, his brother the Swede, and Ori the potatoes, while Ilá took up her knife and sat deftly peeling carrots in one long ringlet peel from root to tip.

"Do you mind if I give you a hand?" Bilbo had hovered over uncertainly, and his smile was at once friendly and tentative, as if he felt, as Ilá did, he was not yet part of the group, and felt awkward making himself noticed by the dwarves.

"Ah, Mr Baggins, if you would be so kind as to cut up some onions," Dori said, bustling past with the cooking-pot, to secure it over the fireplace with a tri-legged trivet. "Give me one chopped fine to sweat down for the flavour and the gravy, first, then just quarter them, I think… Do we all like onions? _Kíli_! If I see you do that to Ori again, I shall have Lady Ilá take one of your fingers, it'll make it more _difficult_ to hold the knife!"

"You wouldn't!" Kíli glanced wide-eyed at Dori, who raised an eyebrow, and then glanced at Ilá, who slowly and carefully trimmed the tip off a carrot, eyeing Dori earnestly, saying lightly, "I could take more than a _finger_ to teach a lesson, Master Dwarf."

Kíli and Fíli gazed uncomfortably from the circumcised carrot to her face, eyes wide. Kíli visibly gulped, while Fíli caught her eye, receiving a subtle wink she sent him as Kíli tightened his knees together, and she chuckled softly.

"I think just the finger would do," Dori said, and she shrugged delicately.

"Fíli, Bofur, hold him down—"

"No! I'll behave!" Kíli blurted, wide-eyed. "I need all my bits!" Fíli laughed.

"For what? You've no lady," he said.

"It is you who cannot keep a lady in his bed," Kíli protested indignantly, wide-eyed.

"That right, Fíli?" Bofur grinned.

"Unfortunately, Kíli flashes them a smile and they would chase him to the ends of the earth," Fíli said, in a display of good-humour and an uncanny tendency not to hold a grudge Whether it was true or not, Ilá did not know, perhaps it was that Kíli was his brother, or there was not much affection between him and the girls he had bedded.

"We could give ye a few pointers, lad," Dwalin spoke up, and Ilá coughed and sputtered, trying not to burst out laughing. Dwalin, teach the lovely Fíli a thing or two about ensnaring a lady into his bed? Kíli bursting into a fit of hysterical giggles did her; she couldn't hold it back any longer and _laughed_. "I'll have ye _both_ know, you impudent mongrel, when I were your age lasses would no' leave my bed."

"Manacles?"

"You—"

"Fortunately, Kíli is a notoriously selfish and impatient lover," Fíli said, distracting both Dwalin and his brother. He glanced at Ilá, with a tiny smile and an even fainter blush as he added, "If I lose my lovers it is not long until they realise their mistake and return."

"Who said that?" Kíli blurted indignantly. "Who said I was selfish and impatient as a lover?"

"Fî."

"Fî—you laid with _Fî_?" Kíli goggled. He frowned suddenly. "I've never laid with Fî."

"No, she heard it from Løt," Fíli said, clearing his throat softly as he peeled a parsnip. For a second, Kíli's expression was stark; then it turned mulish, and a blush crept high into his cheeks.

"I had training to get to!" he cried indignantly. "She cornered me, what was I supposed to do, reject her, make her feel small and insignificant?"

"Those words might possibly have been bandied about with in the same conversation," Ilá said meaningfully; Fíli and Bofur fell about in hysterical giggles, spurred on only by Kíli's deep crimson blush. He frowned suddenly, eyeing his knife with a glint in his eyes.

"Milady, do you admire your glossy mane the length it is?" he asked lightly.

"It warms my head in cool weather," Ilá shrugged, not answering the question, because she was chuckling and knew what he was implying.

"Because I could give you a nice new haircut," the young dwarf suggested.

"You would not wish to cut Ilá's hair," Fíli said to his brother, with a subtle grin, winking at her, "she might wish to retaliate."

"If I was to retaliate, I would not cut off your hair, or your beard," Ilá said, as Fíli gave her knee a tiny touch, clearing his throat softly, a subtle hint she should play along. "I should scalp you."

"I'm a little worried and at the same time incredibly infatuated by your eagerness to deliver physical harm," Bofur said thoughtfully, eyeing Ilá, who grinned suddenly.

"Have you not met many women inclined to punish you for wrongdoings with physical injury?" Ilá asked curiously.

"Aye, but we tend not to leave them alone with access to weapons," Bofur nodded. Ilá chuckled. "Why d'you think none of us have wives?"

"None of you?"

"The lads are too young," Bofur said fairly, "and Glóin's lad is yet younger than Kíli here, I believe. And Balin and Óin are too _old_. Most of us prefer to stay determined bachelors dedicated to our wars and our crafts." He winked at Ilá. "But I'm lookin'."

"You wish to be married?"

"Aye! When shall I set the date?" Bofur grinned, and Ilá laughed richly. "Are you married, Ilá?"

"Are you asking?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"No, hang on, did you think I was asking you to marry me," Bofur blinked quickly, sitting up a little straighter, "or asking _if_ you _were_ married?"

"Yes."

"No, but was that _yes_, or _yes_?"

"_Yes_." She smiled enigmatically, leaving Bofur rather bamboozled. Ilá caught Fíli's expression; he was gazing at her very seriously, head canted to one side as he cut several parsnips into chunks, and she remembered their conversation last evening, about the man who had introduced her to the life of a Ranger.

"Hey, Bilbo—did you leave any bonny lasses lonely for your company in The Shire?" Bofur asked; Bilbo had sat quietly, smiling but shyly not engaging much in the conversation, but the hobbit glanced up from the onions he was quartering (he had his new handkerchief out, daubing at his streaming eyes).

"Me? Oh, no. No, no. It's just me," Bilbo said, smiling contentedly. "No, I… Well, I once thought I'd quite like to marry Primrose Hornblower. She had eyes like cornflowers."

"Why did you not marry her?" Bofur asked incredulously.

"Oh, she married my fourth-cousin once removed on my great-grand-uncle's side," Bilbo sighed, looking for a moment a little glum.

"The complexity of hobbit kinship-networks always amuses me," Ilá smiled softly. "I must say I am fond of your tradition of naming daughters after flowers and jewels."

"I thought some of those ladies in Hobbiton were very fair," Bofur nodded, smiling genially.

"For girls with more hair on their toes than their chins, they were very good-looking," Kíli said, and Ilá laughed richly; his pipe between his teeth, Fíli chuckled and cut the last parsnip into chunks.

"Not every culture appreciates a bearded lady," Bofur said, and Kíli clapped his brother on the back, almost costing Fíli the tip of his thumb.

"I know; Fíli's very picky about his bed-mates," he said.

"Aye, and as first in line, he can have his pick," Bofur grinned, winking at Fíli, who gave a noncommittal smile.

"Not so. Uncle's keen to have him married off to a Firebeard," Kíli grimaced, before laughing and smirking at his elder brother. "Her beard is apparently thicker than yours, Bofur."

"Uncle would not force a wife upon me whom I could not love or respect," Fíli said softly, sneaking a chunk of carrot from the pile Ilá had cut.

"See, dwarves are a picky race," Bofur said genially to Ilá. "Most of us choose to remain single. That, and I can barely afford to take care of myself and me da', and fund my brother's diet, let alone take care of some gorgeous high-maintenance dwarf-maid. Though I find most dwarf-ladies too stonyhearted; I should cut my wrists from boredom if I could not share a laugh with my lady."

Bifur, his duotone beard freshly plaited from a comb, the tip of a goblin-axe embedded in his brow—Ilá did not know how he survived with the weapon embedded in his skull, and indeed, Mr Baggins' eyes flitted to the half-concealed weapon—shuffled past, saying something in dwarvish.

"What did he say?" Ilá asked, as the brothers chuckled at Bofur's deadpan expression.

"He says, 'Water always finds its level'," Bofur said, shaking his head, as Ilá and the boys chuckled. "Thank you for that, Cousin. I love you, too." Over the past few days, Ilá had come to know the dwarves a little better, not just how to differentiate them from each other—they were all incredibly distinctive in their form of dress and adornments to their hair and beards—but their personalities. Great-hearted as dwarves were, Bofur was an unremittingly cheerful dwarf, loyal and sturdy but also good-humoured, and such a person in a company on a journey like theirs would always earn their place in keeping up morale.

She had learned that whatever had happened when the axe was embedded in his skull, Bifur now only communicated in Khuzdul, the secret language of the dwarves, and hand-gestures, and due perhaps to the injury he was particularly quick to jump into an argument. In contrast, Balin used his wits far more than his weapons, due to old age or preference, she did not know, but his brother Dwalin was a fearsome warrior who kept most of the other dwarves at arm's length through sheer intimidation. Óin was hard-of-hearing now, and there were many arguments between him and Glóin, who became irritated and impatient by Óin's trouble hearing; yet Óin was a master with healing poultices and remedies, Glóin, she had just learned, a father. Dori served both as patriarch and the motherly figure in his little nuclear family of two younger-brothers; Nori had had enough of his elder-brother's mollycoddling and gone out of his own, but due to the lack of a sturdy financial foundation to begin with, he had quickly fallen into a life of thievery. Ori was still incredibly young for a dwarf, still reverently studying his Khuzdul and _Cirth_-runes, but he had a good heart in the right place.

Kíli was the young, reckless _lad_, quick to prove his worth but slow to weigh repercussions and think better of risky decisions, making choices that caused problems his introspective, rather more mature elder-brother had to help him out of before Thorin could find out—for she had noticed how the two younger dwarves were around Thorin Oakenshield. The younger sought always Thorin's eye, head a little higher with every hard-earned smile or word of encouragement or approval, flushing with embarrassment at every scolding; Kíli sought first always his elder-brother's eye, and one did not speak without the other pausing to listen, or take their position in an argument or vote. Fíli was harder to read, at least as far as his relationship with Thorin, though Ilá had come to think the two brothers were closer than mere kin to the dwarf-king, and she had seen Fíli wish to _not_ disappoint the dwarf-king. Though only five years stood between them in age, Fíli was decidedly more mature than his brother, though he delighted in joining in Kíli's fun, particularly if at Ori's expense, teasing old Balin or laughing with Bofur.

And as for the leader of the company, Ilá did not like to acknowledge the thought, but he was far too like her. They had both lived hard lives, knew full well the reality of war and the expectations of this quest, had even gone from riches to relative rags, knew intimately the darker nature of the wild lands of Middle Earth, yet she did not bear her bitterness as an impenetrable emotional guard, and that was the difference. While the young "lads" were becoming more at their ease around her, and Bofur laughed heartily at her attempts to pronounce select phrases in Khuzdul, it was Thorin Oakenshield who glowered dangerously and said, "The ancient language of our forefathers is held sacred, Bofur, you know this: We do not teach it to those who would ally with our—"

"Thorin Oakenshield, if Master Bofur wishes to aid Ilá in her attempts to better understand your culture and the words of one of our company, so be it," Gandalf said, rather sharply, though his eyes glittered as he glanced at Bofur. "May he be a lesson to you in friendship and the end of dwarvish exclusivity. At the rate your race is going, less than a third of your number female, the other two-thirds unwilling to marry and pass on their bloodline, the only way your revered language and histories shall survive is through other cultures adopting them."

That settled that, and Kíli had great fun teaching Ilá as many lewd phrases in Khuzdul as he could think of; Balin rolled his eyes but smiled, chuckling, and as Bofur grinned incredulously, he said, "It's no wonder Fíli's face is the colour of a ruby, I should get the bar of soap to wash your mouth out, young lady!"

"Does it not bother you to swear?" Bilbo asked curiously.

"Forget the swearing, she's all but engaging in foreplay with the tart," Bofur said, indicating Kíli with a nod (Kíli laughed richly, while his brother blushed even deeper at Bofur drawing attention to his flushed cheeks).

"I have spent many a year in the heart of a battle-camp, Bofur," Ilá said, smiling softly. "I could tell you such jokes and stories as would make Master Glóin's fine beard go white with shock."

"Oh, indeed?"

"Yes."

"Aye, well, tell us some, then!"

"You wish me to?"

So Ilá told them lewd jokes and stories she had picked up over the decades in soldiers' camps; as a rule soldiers always had the best sexual jokes, due to it being the closest thing, besides their own hand, to a sexual encounter. Her stories had Fíli blushing darker as his grin grew, eyes twinkling, tears of mirth dripping down his cheeks, while Kíli giggled uncontrollably, rolling on his back with tears streaming down his face, Bofur shuddering with laughter as Dwalin roared and Kíli used one of his brother's plaits to daub his eyes dry.

Perhaps it was the sight of Kíli's reactions to her jokes and Fíli wiping his eyes, beaming, but Ilá was sure she saw a smile flicker across Thorin's dark face, and as Dori berated Ori for giggling at things "you ought not to understand at your age" the cluster of dwarves around Ilá broke away and Thorin looked more contented than he had since they had met.

Still giggling from Ilá's jokes, now perfectly dry and warm, the fire blazing (Bofur had packed a sack full of coal for just such an occasion when firewood became scarce), their clothes drying and a stew of flour-dredged beef chunks, root vegetables and onions cooking slowly over the fire, the pipe-weed out and the ceiling of the cavern hazy with smoke, the atmosphere within the cavern was akin to that of a well-lit inn full of laughter, raucous conversation, the smell of good food cooking, and, when Fíli was encouraged by his brother to get his fiddle out, music.

Kíli was all for showing off his skill with the bow (on the fiddle as well as with an arrow) but Fíli was the more introspective, almost bashful brother and had to be _encouraged_ by Kíli, Thorin and Bilbo to play; the hobbit was fond of music and, though many of the dwarves' songs were of gold and treasures, some of them spoke of Durin's Awakening, and the creation of the dwarves by Aulë the Smith. Bilbo could sing, relatively well "for my own people" and the young brothers were very adept at creating a melody to accompany him; in his turn, Bilbo sang of beautiful, growing things, he sang ale-songs and played as much of the Springle-ring, a very lively hobbit-dance, as he could on Fíli's fiddle.

Ilá, long having since separated her incredibly long hair into two thick, heavy, shining plaits, had also wound her hair in a turban around her head, and chuckled and grinned, watching Bilbo try to teach Bofur and Kíli the steps to the energetic Springle-ring, laughing with his hands on his knees (now clothed again in his short trousers and striped shirt, his braces dangling around his hips).

When Dori declared that the meat had cooked through beautifully, bowls and forks were passed around and everyone sat down to laugh and enjoy a beautiful stew, melt-in-your-mouth chunks of beef, with hunks of carrot, parsnip, Swede and potato, flavourful and soaked in a rich gravy; with the laughter of the dwarves, the wholesome nature of the meal and the warmth of the fire, the storm outside was quite forgotten.

* * *

**A.N.**: I have a sudden urge, inspired by my hair (which is _perfect_ hobbit-hair, I should've been a body-double for Peter Jackson's films!) to write a story with a female hobbit going along for the journey; something about her arguing with comfortable Bilbo on him going on adventures, when she can whip him at conkers and can wield a walking-stick the way Little John does a staff during his fight with Robin in _Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves_, Bilbo going (pinching his forehead for patience) "It's _dangerous_" and her responding "So why are you going then?" But I can't justify starting a new story, with no real idea what point there'd be to it, who the girl is, what purpose she would serve, how she would change things, I suppose she will forever remain a vague, curly-haired figure who calls Thorin a "stodgy old git" for hoarding the treasures of Erebor when the people of Laketown are starving/dying from exposure.


	8. The Pale Orc

**A.N.**: Having been thinking of female-hobbits for the story I won't write, I've come to the conclusion that a hobbit would make a very good wife for Bofur. And potentially for Kíli too. I can just see toymaker Bofur filling the toy-strewn halls of his palace in Erebor with a dozen children, it would be a riot; it would be how Bilbo was with the group of children at his birthday-party, enthralling them with stories of trolls.

And I got a sudden vision of Cathy from the 2009 _Wuthering Heights_, particularly wild Cathy with her cropped red jacket, romping over the heather-carpeted moors; that kind of personality is exactly Kíli, don't you think? Kíli's adventurous, rather reckless nature, combined with an agriculture-loving, industrious and huge-hearted hobbit-girl…

I do think Bilbo, Fíli and Kíli were three of the best characters in the book; the brothers seemed completely immune to the 'dragon-sickness' when they found the treasures in Erebor, they sat playing music on golden harps and were ashamed when Thorin expelled Bilbo from the subterranean palace.

* * *

**Nobility is Not a Birth-Right**

_08_

The Pale Orc

* * *

The storm had raged all day and all through the night;, and by eight o'clock in the morning the storm had broken, the sky lightening to the colour of Gandalf's robe, with a weak sun glittering on the raindrops gathered on leaf and stone. A late breakfast of eggs and sausages and leftover stew was enjoyed, the ponies saddled, and they set off at a little past eleven o'clock; "At the very least, if anybody wished to follow our trail, it is now irrevocably lost," Ilá pointed out, as they picked their way along the waterlogged and incredibly muddy, dangerously slippery path through the hills. The downside to the torrential downpour and horrific thunder-storm was, of course, that many a slender sapling (and some not-so-slender) had become uprooted, blocking the path and making it necessary to create detours.

They had lost almost an entire day yesterday, for they had travelled only several miles through the torrential downpour before three o'clock had found them seeking shelter in the cavern; today they encountered only a few small problems, the greatest being the near-sinking of poor Opal in a three-foot-deep puddle of thick, squelching mud. Ilá had to use a _hithlain_ rope to lasso her while Fíli, Kíli and Bofur pulled her out of the muck. It was only that slight mishap that set them back forty-five minutes, and plodding on their way, Ilá scanned the skies as well as the woods, and let out a piercing, melodic whistle. The shrieking hiss of a large bird-of-prey answered her, and she smiled as she watched a great peregrine falcon circle lower toward them.

"Orós," she cooed, and smiled, as she held out her arm; the enormous bird flapped its wings to slow and hovered a moment before screeching and landing heavily on her forearm. "_Where've you been, hm_?"

The bird appeared to shriek back an answer, fidgeting on her gauntlet, ruffling its feathers. Ilá had found the peregrine falcon years before, injured with a goblin-arrow through his wing; she had nursed him back to health, and in return he had become very attached to her. He was now her friend, devoted to her safety; he watched the roads for her, kept especial tabs on several villages in which she was welcome and rather revered for past deeds, and in particular passed messages far quicker than any post, either riding one of the _Maeras_ or no, could ever communicate.

As the dwarves and Mr Baggins (thoroughly terrified of the bird almost as big as he was) looked on, Ilá appeared to have a _conversation_ with the bird! She spoke in the elven-tongue, her tone becoming quieter, darker and more concerned, and if he could not understand the language of the elves, old Balin was shrewd enough to speak the language of some of the birds. Ravens in particular he could understand and communicate with perfectly, they having been the namesake of a particular sentry-post on Erebor, but he could catch the gist of what the falcon was saying to the Dúnedain Ranger-maiden.

"…_oh, that's not good_," Gandalf caught, and he glanced back at Ilá, his eyebrows lowering darkly beneath the wide rim of his great hat. Ilá gave him a single, expressive look, and the aged wizard sighed heavily.

The Orcs were indeed using the razed fortress Amon Sûl as a base-camp; and from Weathertop, elevated as it was a thousand feet above the rest of the gentle plains, one could see for miles around. It was for that reason, as well as it being the location of the greatest of the _palantíri_, the three kingdoms Arthedain, Rhudaur and Cardolan, divided from the great North-kingdom of Arnor, had devolved into years of wars to try to claim it.

Ilá had used Weathertop many times to rest and take surveillance; and several times she had orchestrated ambushes with other Rangers to ensnare renegade Orc packs, more so in the last few years than when first she took up her sword. Now she supposed the Orcs that had survived had learned. Amon Sûl was the perfect location. And astride Gundabad Wargs, they could cover many miles.

"_Do you want to go out again_?" she asked her falcon, and he hissed in response, ruffling his feathers. "_The marshes_," she answered. He bent to nip her finger affectionately, then spread his enormous wings and took flight, soaring into the air, becoming little more than a speck in the iron-grey sky.

"What was all that about?" Bofur asked incredulously.

"The road east is being watched," Ilá said softly, glancing over her shoulder.

"Isn't it always?" Ilá shrugged delicately.

They reached Bree at a quarter past two in the afternoon, by the clock on the mantel in the _Prancing_ _Pony_. The ponies were stabled, and the dwarves piled into the parlour of the inn, tugging off hoods and sighing as warmth rushed over them from the roaring fires, heavy stone mantels raised taller than they were. The atmosphere in the _Prancing Pony_ was as merry and warm as in the dwarves' cavern the previous day, the ceiling with its exposed beams hazy with fragrant smoke as every male in the place lit up his pipe and blew smoke-rings; the _Prancing Pony_ was considered by most the hub of pipe-smoking culture.

Ilá had long used the _Prancing Pony_, so conveniently located halfway between Imladris and the Grey Havens, as a rest-stop and also a place to gather news and information from the other parts of the North brought in from both directions on the North-South Road (now known as the Greenway) and the East-West Road. Bree was a small town but it was home to several different cultures; hobbits and Men, with many a dwarven visitor, and it was also a centre for trade, with a very large market every month. People came from miles around to sell their wares and hear news. And those in Bree were used to strange peoples visiting the inn; so a party of dwarves was not perhaps so wholly exceptional. However, when accompanied by a well-known wizard, a small but finely-dressed hobbit and Ilá, particularly, the pub fell quiet upon their entry.

Only when Ilá stepped inside after Ori and Glóin, though; and she knew why the men enjoying a mug of ale and a smoke eyed her warily. Her reputation preceded her in this area, and she had been to Bree many a time and knew the locals had heard the stories, for they were sometimes brought by travellers, and they recognised her for who she was. Her bound hair, her ragged dress, the sick scar on the left-side of her face—she knew it was there yet did not feel it, and only truly remembered it when she touched her face, or when others stared (like Ori)—and stare people did as she sidled over to a corner of the pub, leaving the others to order everything in Mr Butterbur's larder, and pull in the services of the cooks.

"Let's put these tables together, or we shall never get everyone a seat," Balin said, and Dwalin and Bifur shoved two sturdy tables together, pushing chairs all around, and soon they were both laden with a tureen of soup, fresh bread, cold cuts of gammon, chicken and roast-beef, a platter of cheeses, dishes of chutney, piccalilli, bowls of beetroot and pickled onions, and Mr Butterbur brought out a steaming platter of bubble-and-squeak with fried eggs, and a bowl of baked-beans.

Bofur grinned and set a mug before Bilbo, whose eyes widened. "What's this?"

"That, my good hobbit, is a _pint_."

"A _pint_!" Bilbo breathed out softly, gazing at the foaming tankard of ale before him.

"Aye. It's a big world outside the realms of The Shire," Bofur grinned. "Aren't you glad you came with us?"

"I think I shall be, if only for this," Bilbo smiled, taking a sip of his ale. He made a thoughtful, delighted noise and took a larger drink. Gradually, with the noise of the dwarves as they ate, laughed and smoked—and above all, drank—the atmosphere of the parlour returned amid the original patrons. Ilá helped herself to a little bubble-and-squeak, a fried egg, some baked-beans, lovely ham, a chunk of cheddar, and some beautifully tart pickled-onions. She sat in the corner, aware that several gazes landed on her despite the merry gathering noisily enjoying their food and drink, for eyes always did follow her in this place. She was too outlandish and unusual for even this market-town full of travellers. Rangers were dangerous enough; nobody had ever heard of a female one before she had started to gain notoriety.

"This place grew silent as the grave when you walked in," Bofur remarked genially, glancing at Ilá. "Care to explain?"

"They grow wary in my company," Ilá said softly, with a small sigh. She did not like people to be afraid of her, not when she was not on a battlefield, and even then she preferred not to slay those who were terrified by her. She had never been a woman who liked to have people afraid and careful around her; her childhood had been highly affectionate and warm, and when among friends she was a very warm person. But she was isolated where people had become wary of her, and that only perpetuated her reputation as a dangerous lone-wolf in the wild.

"Ah, they've heard the tales of your deeds abroad," Bofur nodded. "The lads've been having fun spinning yarns to scare Ori."

"I had guessed as much," Ilá said softly, glancing at Fíli and Kíli, who were giggling and drinking ale. Fíli glanced over, feeling her eyes on him, and he flushed slightly as he realised what they were talking about.

"Just having a bit of fun," he shrugged subtly, raising his mug to toast them before taking a sip, and swatting at his brother, who had tried to use one of his plaits to wipe his mouth. "Oi! Enough of that." He slapped his brother's hand playfully.

It was not long—or rather, time flew too quickly and they were back on the road again. Thorin had wanted to discuss their journey while they sat at table, the dwarves smoking and playing their dice game, taking an idle draw from their tankards.

"I think we should save that conversation until we have not eyes and ears around us," Gandalf said sagely, aware that those closest to the dwarves' company were eyeing them rather shrewdly, especially the gold being passed between Dori, Glóin, Bifur and Dwalin while they played dice.

So, to soon for the dwarves' liking, and with many a regretful glance over their shoulders at the warm hearth, foaming tankards and plates of food being doled out to patrons, the dwarves gathered their belongings and made their way outside with Gandalf, Ilá and Bilbo bringing up the rear. Provisions were bought at the market and the bakery, loading up the poor cargo-ponies.

"Ilá, you know these lands better than anyone," Gandalf said, glancing over his shoulder at her as he saddled his chestnut mare. "I think it best you take point." Ilá nodded, helping pile the new provisions onto Snowdrop, Opal and Bungo, and she set off, leading Snowdrop, out of the East-gate of Bree.

"Where are you leading us?" Thorin demanded; Ilá had quickly taken them off the East Road less than a mile outside Bree, for she knew that the line between civilisation and the wild was very blurred once outside the eastern borders of Bree; everything beyond to the East was wilder-land, dangerous and deceptive. Many an unwary traveller had been waylaid on the East Road, before ever they realised they needed to defend themselves.

"Into the wild, Master Dwarf," Ilá said quietly, striding along beside Snowdrop, leading the caravan of ponies. They could not have been a more obvious target, for if Orós was right and the company of Orcs had been sending out scouts each night, they were a very easy sight to distinguish. She was glad of the rain yesterday, for between Bree and The Shire it had wiped away all traces of their path, and she hoped for a little more rain before they could reach the Hidden Valley. Like goblins, Gundabad Wargs could pick up a scent for days afterward, unless heavy rain destroyed it; and if the Orcs sent scouts North, their mounts would surely discover the scent of dwarf.

She got her wish, slightly; a fine drizzle of rain misted their faces and made their hair sparkle as if with dew as the ponies plodded along, glad of the respite in the _Prancing Pony_'s stables. The sky grew icy grey and more than a few of their party sat shivering in their saddles, Bilbo especially with his knee-breeches; Ilá pulled on her thick cloak and walked on, leading the pony-caravan through little copses of laden horse-chestnuts and great oaks afflicted with mistletoe, just beginning to bear its pale fruit. Across muddy fields and splashing through streams bloated from the sudden storm, they had to sidestep fallen tree-limbs and avoid great puddles, and encountered many a farmer bemoaning the storm and its destructive force on his crops.

They meandered through the outlying farms of Bree, the dwarves warming themselves with a pipe when the weather cooled considerably, a bitter North wind cutting through their clothing, and they were all glad of the respite when Ilá navigated them to the Chetwood, a hilly but lush wood filled with deer, pheasant, an abundance of wild fruit-trees and rabbits.

There were approximately fifty miles between the town of Bree and the far eastern edges of the Midgewater Marshes, but they had started out from Bree after half a day's journey already, and they had not long been travelling before the sun started to sink in the sky. The evenings were coming earlier, and faster, as autumn approached, and Ilá heard Bilbo moaning to himself wistfully of the Harvest Festival he would miss.

Before the smell of the bog could reach them, Ilá had them stop, unsaddle the horses, and decamp; a copse of chestnuts, so old and large that the boughs quite met overhead creating a canopy of shelter against the elements, was chosen for the location of their camp, and Óin and Glóin were set to work building a fire that Dori could cook over. A simple supper was prepared, sausages, tomatoes and a few mushrooms, all fried over the open fire, and Ilá was asleep before the first watch had been handed to Bifur. She was vaguely aware of something golden hovering over her as she fell asleep, and someone tucking her cloak closer around her for warmth, before she was completely and blissfully asleep.

* * *

"If anyone was to ask my opinion," Dori gritted out, as he picked his way carefully around the bog, following Ilá's lead, "I would argue we're going the _long_ way round."

"It's the scenic route," Ilá said, and her voice was muffled: upon coming to the Midgewater Marshes—aptly named for the great clouds of midges that hovered over the stagnant water—she had made a few specific adjustments to her dress; she had hitched up the hem of her skirt, tucked gloves up her gauntlets to protect her hands and prevent anything flying up her sleeves, buttoned her removable knitted cowl around her neck over her nose, keeping a shield of iridescent black, translucent silk over her eyes; no part of her could, or yet had been bitten by a midge, though the dwarves and poor Bilbo were having a rougher time of it. And Ori; the midges seemed attracted to his damp knitted cardigan and wool overcoat.

"It's the carnivorous route!" Bofur called, grunting as his foot sank six inches into the boggy water. "What on earth possessed you to bring us this way?"

"Self-preservation," Ilá called back, and the dwarf laughed.

"Aye, that'll do it."

"Might I ask why we are being taken miles out of our way?" Thorin asked coolly; he had fallen over several times, and was dripping-wet with a distinctly disgruntled expression. It was almost a_ glower_.

"The East Road is being watched," Ilá said.

"Isn't it always?"

"From Weathertop, Master Dwarf," she added. "I am keen not to be seen from the watchtower. Word has reached me that a pack of Orcs is using the ancient hill to observe the Road."

"Let's just go for their heads and have done with this!" Glóin growled.

"They will see us coming, Master Glóin," Ilá sighed. "If we could I would wish to eradicate the threat, but they have the high-ground, and they travel astride Gundabad Wargs. If we must go out of our way, we shall."

"And after these marshes?" Thorin asked. "Where next will you lead us?"

"Onwards," Ilá remarked, for though they were hidden in a marshy swamp that most avoided, and few knew how to navigate, there were still spies for the enemy in the form of birds, sly beasts. Orós circled above, sometimes screeching out to let her know he was still keeping guard, and sometimes he would dive for prey, feeding off marsh-hens and mice. Twenty-odd miles they had to cover before they were free of the Midgewater Marshes; they had already covered at least half that distance, but it had taken them a long time, thanks to the pessimistic grumbling of the dwarves, navigating the ponies around on safe-ground, hoisting Ori and Kíli out of the water when their ponies had accidentally dislodged them on unequal footing (to the amusement of the others, until it was their turn to pitch a foot into the water).

"If there are Wargs about as you say, at least this _stench_ shall cover our tracks," Dwalin grumbled.

"Indeed," Gandalf said, grimacing as he picked his way through the swamp.

"How many times have you been through this swamp?" Fíli asked, poking his tongue out to spit several gnats from his lips, running his palm over his mouth with a grunt and a grimace. "To know the safe path over sturdy ground?"

"Many times," Ilá sighed softly.

"How long have you been in the wild, then?" Bofur asked.

"For many a year, Master Bofur," Ilá sighed.

"And what do they eat," Kíli asked, spitting with a grimace, as he swatted midges attacking his face, "when they can't have dwarf?" Ilá chuckled softly.

"A few more miles, Master Kíli, and we shall find ourselves amongst the rolling hills," she said encouragingly. "At which point the midges shall be exchanged for Wargs."

"Something to look forward to," Fíli said good-naturedly.

"Aye, my axe grows restless," Dwalin rumbled.

"You shall have plenty of opportunity to exercise it soon enough, if I know the wilds as I do," Ilá yawned. In back, Dori and Ori were having an argument.

"—hate this, I'm all itchy and they keep _biting me_! I'm soaked through, my socks are all squidgy."

"You were so _keen_ to volunteer for this quest, you knew best, you said, you can stand living in the wilds without your feather duvet and favourite pillow," Dori said, one of the few still astride his pony, though Minty looked grumpy about it as he tentatively picked his way through the marsh.

"I can! I have!" Ori protested indignantly. "It is only you nitpicking about my not bringing spare long-johns. Kíli didn't bring any."

"Aye, he didn't, and I'll bet his mother's sat at home rolling her eyes at his wardrobe full of underwear, worrying her boy will die of hypothermia!"

"It's not even _winter_ yet," Ori sighed, rolling his eyes impatiently. "It's the middle of August."

"You didn't plan ahead! This quest shan't be over before the Harvest Festivals!" Dori protested. "No spare long-johns but you brought that dratted _book_ with you!"

"It's important."

"Oh, really? Then why aren't we allowed to read it?"

"It's not ready yet," Ori said shyly.

"Ready for what?"

"Reading."

"Why write it if no-one's allowed to read it?" Nori asked curiously.

"It's where he keeps record of every nasty thing you've done and said to him," Ilá said, glancing over her shoulder, knowing her face was completely disguised, "isn't it, Ori?"

"Yes," Ori nodded, with a fleeting grin.

"What _do_ you write in that book, Ori?" Bofur asked curiously.

"Just…things," Ori said shyly.

"Things about our quest?" Bofur asked succinctly.

"Indeed, someone should keep record," Thorin said, showing an incredibly rare moment of encouragement toward the youngest dwarf. "Shall I name you official scribe of the Quest for Erebor?" Ori grinned—then fell flat on his face in a puddle of marsh-water.

"Aye, you should write a checklist for things young dwarves should pack when setting off on an adventure," Bofur grinned good-humouredly, picking Ori out of the water. "Spare long-johns, one pair. Nagging brothers—"

"_One pair_," Kíli laughed, as Dori and Nori pulled faces. The others chuckled and laughed, ribbing Dori and Nori for alternately babying and bullying their youngest brother.

Their humour did not last long; as Ilá sure-footedly guided them through the bog, most of the dwarves took tumbles or sank a foot into the water, soaking their socks, the midges swarming and biting. Grumbling, swatting at their faces, itching where the midges got under their clothing, they struggled to guide the ponies through the bog. None wished to pause midway through the marsh to eat, for they feared they would get more of a mouthful of midges than anything else, so they continued on, stomachs grumbling, socks squelching, midges biting, and a cold wind nipping their noses. Ilá led the way, plotting their path over the Weather Hills that would best benefit their party, for she knew the hills, and the Men who farmed and mined them. They were good men, fierce, and a few were, of course, prone to the vices that plagued every race, rudeness, distrust and selfishness, the propensity not to bath often. On that last part some of the dwarves would probably find common-ground with such Men, and the thought made her smile as she strode on, grunting as she forced her way through a puddle.

It was with a great sigh of relief that they reached the end of the marsh, the sky tinged with gold and vibrant amber, ruby touching the gilded clouds, a surprisingly wonderful sunset for so dreary a day, but it had cleared up beautifully and it had truly only been the midges that had made them miserable. The transition from marsh to meadow was not a dramatic one; the one seeped seamlessly into the other, fewer puddles and more tufts of long grasses, wildflowers scattered about, evidence of a great system of burrows, belonging to rabbits that sat and nibbled, ears twitching, eyeing the party before dashing off, only their fluffy white tails brief glimpses of evidence of their existence. And the land became slowly hillier, much more vividly green and alive than the marsh, the inclines becoming steeper, craggy sun-bleached rocks creeping with snails from the previous few days' rains poking through the grass and wild shrubs and creeping plants, some of which flowered with tiny specks of white or purple, blue cornflowers brilliant beside rockroses, trees growing in sporadic clusters in craggy vales between hilly jointures carved in ages past by rivers long since redirected.

This part of Middle-Earth was beautiful, rugged, the Men who lived there long enjoying a culture that had grown around the 'highlands', the Weather Hills a distinctive feature on the horizon, with Amon Sûl the southernmost and highest hill in a long range, visible from a very great distance. Long wars over the great watchtower years before had razed it to the ground, and the Men who had lived in the hills at that time had learned how to fight, but better, how to hide, how to _survive_. They tilled the earth but mined beneath it also, and had spent a long time rebuilding the other fortresses littered amongst the hills as strongholds against raids from other Men or, more significantly, Orcs that dared come down from Mount Gundabad, which was now and had been since the Battle of Azanulbizar an Orc-capital.

It was in the direction of the smallest and most difficulty-accessible fortress that Ilá led the dwarves towards; they would not reach it for a few days at the pace they were travelling, even if they reached no problems, and there they could rest and replenish supplies, for she was well-known there and rather revered for having led a small force against a much larger number of Orcs consistently raiding agrarian hamlets surrounding the fortress, through cunning and creativity. There she had learned blacksmithing, or at least how to shod a horse and make arrowheads. It had been a long time ago…but the people did not forget. She was always welcome there.

They had to stop, however, when the darkness threatened to become complete, and Ilá led them to a stony, sheltered outcrop overlooking a valley between gentle swells of heather-covered hills overgrown with trees, flower-specked shrubs and rabbits. It was on these that she preyed for their supper; she had caught three lovely fat rabbits and gutted them, carefully preserving the furs to trade in the fortress, before Dori and Bofur had the fire blazing, and that was in part due to her loyal falcon.

Dori had packed flour, bread and mustard among the supplies, and it was with a coating of grainy mustard and breadcrumbs that they prepared the rabbit, frying the pieces on the bone in a skillet, while Bilbo prepared a small salad that few besides himself, Ilá, Dori and Gandalf shared in. Pipes were again brought out, and the dwarves' voices rang low and rich, accompanying Fíli and Kíli's small fiddles, expertly played, as the fire crackled and a dessert of fresh fruit was handed around to those who wanted it. In the coming months, fresh fruit would become a luxury, as would vegetables, and Ilá enjoyed as much of it as she could, so she lay on her bed-roll, propped up on her elbow as she listened to the music, eating a plum that had juice running down her arm.

Again, it wasn't long before the dwarves drifted off one by one, their snores creating a considerably less melodious sound than their singing, and Gandalf decided he wanted first watch, though Fíli and Kíli remained by the fire while Balin puffed silently on his pipe. And again, Ilá, having walked all day, fell asleep almost as instantly as resting her head on the down-stuffed pillow of her bed-roll. She dozed, eyes on the fire, which illuminated Fíli and Kíli as they quietly murmured to each other, Fíli fiddling with his star, Kíli polishing his bow.

She noticed when Bilbo gave up trying to get to sleep over the sound of Glóin's snores, but was too comfortable, cocooned in her fur-lined cloak, warm and snug, to twist and watch where he wandered off to.

Used as she was to the noises of the wild, she recognised the wail of an infant badger, distinctive as the sound they made when in distress, usually separated from their mother; for such a nature-oriented race as hobbits, Bilbo was a novice in the wild, and Fíli and Kíli knew it, though they were not much better.

"What was that?" Bilbo asked nervously, as the sound of the wail echoed on the wind.

"Orcs," Kíli said softly; she could see him and Fíli, illuminated in the firelight.

"_Orcs_?" She kept an eye squinted on the two brothers, for though she knew it was a baby badger she didn't doubt they would take the opportunity to wind Bilbo up into a nervous fit.

"Throat-cutters. There'll be dozens of them out there," Fíli said sombrely. "The lowlands are crawling with them."

"They strike in the wee small hours when everyone's asleep, quick and quiet, no screams…just lots of blood," Kíli half-whispered. She watched Kíli smirk, then share a smile and a chuckle with his brother.

"You think that's funny?" a harsh voice asked, and Thorin emerged from the shadows, wearing his customary scowl. "You think a night-raid by Orcs is a _joke_?" From her position, Ilá saw Fíli's admittedly small smile fade, and his brother, the young, reckless, practically inexperienced but wholeheartedly loyal Kíli, duck his chin, eyes downcast, looking incredibly embarrassed.

"We didn't mean anything by it," he said repentantly.

"No you didn't," Thorin snarled bitterly. "You know nothing of the world."

Balin sighed heavily, stumping over. "Don't mind him, laddie… Thorin has more cause than most…to hate Orcs." Ilá doubted that. "After the dragon took the Lonely Mountain, King Thrór tried to reclaim the ancient dwarf kingdom of Moria…but our enemy had got their first. Moria had been taken by legions of Orcs, led by the most vile of all their race, Azog…the Defiler." That caught Ilá's attention, and she glanced up, frowning at Balin. "The giant Gundabad Orc had sworn…to wipe out the Line of Durin. He began…by beheading the King. Thráin, Thorin's father, was driven mad with grief. He went missing—taken prisoner or killed, we did not know. We were leaderless…defeat and death were upon us… That is when I saw him. A young dwarf prince, facing down the Pale Orc. He stood alone against this terrible foe, his armour rent, using nothing but a broken branch as a shield," Balin said, pride emanating from the wizened old face in the firelight as Fíli and Kíli gazed at their leader in wonder. "He cut off the Pale Orc's hand… Azog the Defiler learned that day that the Line of Durin would not be so easily broken… Our forces rallied, and drove the Orcs back… Our enemy had been defeated. But there was no feast, nor song that night, for our dead were beyond the count of grief. We few had survived… And I thought to myself then, there is one I could follow…there is one I could call King."

Azog the Defiler…

"And the Pale Orc?" Bilbo spoke up, the first time he ever had in front of such a company—for now, all of the dwarves had woken from sleep, listening to Balin's tale, gazing upon Thorin, their king-in-exile.

"He slunk back into the hole from whence he came," Thorin said darkly, striding back toward the rock against which he had been dozing. "That filth died of his wounds long ago." That made Ilá glance quickly at the dwarf-king. Dead of his wounds? She knew that was not so.

"You marked his dead corpse as your own kill, did you?" she asked, and several of the dwarves glanced at her.

"Not all of us mark our prey to let others fear our names," Thorin remarked coolly.

"Perhaps you should have," she said, cold anger rising, though she did her best to tamp it. It was not Thorin's fault, after all…not directly…

"What does it matter?" Thorin growled. "That abomination is dead."

"He is not," Ilá said softly, gazing back at Thorin. "After you took the Pale Orc's hand…you should have finished by taking his head."

The Pale Orc could then not have killed…well, it was in the past, and Ilá could do nothing about their fates, though she could wish by the light of Eärendil that she could.

* * *

**A.N.**: I'm back at uni now, joy, so that means my pace of updates will be sorely affected; I'm in my final year so dissertation/thesis work will be keeping my nose to the grindstone. On another note, I think the next chapter will get some action…


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